Specific Specimens

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The Importance of Proper Specimen Collection and Handling

Tools for Your Patients. The quality of any laboratory test result is dependent on many variables, the first of which begins with you. Your care, skill, and knowledge when preparing the patient and specimen are essential to the provision of the highest quality standards for testing and services. The patient must first be properly prepared so that the best possible specimen can be collected.

Next, the actual collection of the specimen must be completed. Then, the specimen should be properly processed, packaged and transported to the laboratory in a timely manner and under environmental conditions that will not compromise the integrity of the specimen. After all of these activities take place, a quality analysis can be performed. The specimen collection and handling process can be completed by you and your staff, or by referring your patient to a Quest Diagnostics Patient Service Center.

Please contact the laboratory for clarifications, if needed, prior to specimen collection. Use universal precautions when handling specimens containing blood or other potentially infectious material. In the event of an exposure, administer first aid immediately, notify your manager or supervisor and seek prompt medical attention. First aid includes washing cuts and needle sticks with soap and water; flushing splashes to the nose, mouth, or skin with copious amounts of water; and irrigating eyes with clean water, saline, or sterile irrigants. Specimens must be handled in a safe manner and according to applicable legal requirements or guidance.

Information on safe specimen handling may be obtained from the U. In handling human specimens, the goal is to protect health care workers and ancillary staff such as transportation as well as the general public from exposures to blood and to other potentially infectious body fluids.

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Besides following other specimen preparation procedures included in this section, customers should, prior to sending a specimen to Quest Diagnostics, ensure that there is no leakage from or visible contamination outside the specimen container and that there are no needles or other sharps in the package that could cause injury or pathogenic exposure to anyone handling or opening the package and inner containers.

Quest Diagnostics reserves the right to refuse to accept any transports that pose a safety hazard to its employees. Many tests require that the patient be prepared in some specific way to ensure useful results. The best analytical techniques provide results that are only as meaningful as the quality of the specimen that has been submitted for analysis.

Our goal is to provide you with the most useful diagnostic information possible. If you have questions about patient preparation for any test, please call Client Services for further assistance. For the majority of tests performed on serum, plasma or whole blood, a fasting specimen is preferred. Non-fasting specimens often contain fat particles that can interfere with many analytical procedures.

Fasting is defined as no consumption of food or beverage, other than water, for 9 to 12 hours before testing. It is helpful to indicate patient age and blood type so that appropriate reference ranges can be assigned for reporting purposes.

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On occasion, patient age will assist the technologists in choosing the appropriate initial sample dilution for the assay. Special small conical tubes with screw caps are provided to prevent evaporation of small volume samples.

Specimen Handling : General Guidelines

These tubes will hold up to 1. Standard specimen transfer tubes should be used for larger volume samples. For urine specimens, use urine vials. Contact Client Services for information about supplies provided by Quest Diagnostics. The most common are the Glucose Tolerance Tests where the patient drinks a solution containing glucose, and blood specimens are obtained before and at various times after the drink, to measure the concentration of glucose in plasma or serum.

Children ingest an amount of glucose proportional to their body weight 1. Specimen Labels All specimens should be labeled at the time of collection with at least two patient identifiers. Test Requisition Specimens must be accompanied by a paper requisition, prepared either by hand or printed from an electronic ordering system. The requisition, at a minimum should contain the following information: Adequate patient identification information e. When ordering tests in a series e.

Use one test requisition. Write the number of specimens on the test requisition. Submit all specimens within a series together in one specimen bag.

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Improperly labeled specimens will be rejected. The following are the minimum specimen packaging guidelines that should be followed when submitting specimens. Quest Diagnostics will provide a lock box for specimens awaiting -pick--up by a Quest Diagnostics Logistics Representative. However, customers are responsible for the security of specimens prior to -pick--up. We recommend that the lockbox be placed in a location that is not subject or exposed to extreme temperatures.

Frozen specimens must be transported in insulated containers surrounded by an ample amount of dry ice to keep the specimen frozen until it reaches the laboratory. Thawed specimens are unsuitable for analysis. In the event a thawed specimen is received, you will be asked to resubmit an adequate specimen.

If you would like more information about sending specimens to Quest Diagnostics, please contact your Client Service Representative. Do not send any needles or other sharp or breakable objects. Do not send medical waste as a diagnostic specimen since it may violate the law and create a health hazard. For example, the common dandelion is a controversial taxon: The type of the name Taraxacum officinale is the same whether the circumscription of the species includes all those small species Taraxacum officinale is a "big" species or whether the circumscription is limited to only one small species among the other hundred Taraxacum officinale is a "small" species.

The name Taraxacum officinale is the same and the type of the name is the same, but the extent of what the name actually applies to varies greatly. Setting the circumscription of a taxon is done by a taxonomist in a publication. The ICN provides a listing of the various kinds of type article 9 , [9] the most important of which is the holotype.

Note that the word "type" appears in botanical literature as a part of some older terms that have no status under the ICN: In zoological nomenclature , the type of a species or subspecies is a specimen, or series of specimens. The type of a genus or subgenus is a species. The type of a suprageneric taxon e. Names higher than superfamily rank do not have types. A "name-bearing type" is a specimen or image that "provides the objective standard of reference whereby the application of the name of a nominal taxon can be determined.

Although in reality biologists may examine many specimens when available of a new taxon before writing an official published species description, nonetheless, under the formal rules for naming species the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature , a single type must be designated, as part of the published description.

A type description must include a diagnosis typically, a discussion of similarities to and differences from closely related species , and an indication of where the type specimen or specimens are deposited for examination. The geographical location where a type specimen was originally found is known as its type locality.

In the case of parasites, the term type host or symbiotype is used to indicate the host organism from which the type specimen was obtained. Zoological collections are maintained by universities and museums. Ensuring that types are kept in good condition and made available for examination by taxonomists are two important functions of such collections. And, while there is only one holotype designated, there can be other "type" specimens, the following of which are formally defined:.

When a single specimen is clearly designated in the original description, this specimen is known as the holotype of that species.

Type (biology)

The holotype is typically placed in a major museum, or similar well-known public collection, so that it is freely available for later examination by other biologists. When the original description designated a holotype, there may still be additional specimens listed in the type series and those are termed paratypes. These are not name-bearing types. An allotype is a specimen of the opposite sex to the holotype, designated from among paratypes. It was also formerly used for a specimen that shows features not seen in the holotype of a fossil.

A neotype is a specimen later selected to serve as the single type specimen when an original holotype has been lost or destroyed or where the original author never cited a specimen. A syntype is any one of two or more specimens that is listed in a species description where no holotype was designated; historically, syntypes were often explicitly designated as such, and under the present ICZN this is a requirement, but modern attempts to publish species description based on syntypes are generally frowned upon by practicing taxonomists, and most are gradually being replaced by lectotypes.

Those that still exist are still considered name-bearing types. A lectotype is a specimen later selected to serve as the single type specimen for species originally described from a set of syntypes. In zoology, a lectotype is a kind of name-bearing type. When a species was originally described on the basis of a name-bearing type consisting of multiple specimens, one of those may be designated as the lectotype. Having a single name-bearing type reduces the potential for confusion, especially considering that it is not uncommon for a series of syntypes to contain specimens of more than one species.

A notable example is that Carl Linnaeus is the lectotype for the species Homo sapiens. A paralectotype is any additional specimen from among a set of syntypes, after a lectotype has been designated from among them. A special case in Protistans where the type consists of two or more specimens of "directly related individuals representing distinct stages in the life cycle"; these are collectively treated as a single entity, and lectotypes cannot be designated from among them.

An illustration on which a new species or subspecies was based. For instance, the Burmese Python, Python bivittatus , is one of many species that are based on illustrations by Albertus Seba An ergatotype is a specimen selected to represent a worker member in hymenopterans which have polymorphic castes. Recently, some species have been described where the type specimen was released alive back into the wild, such as the Bulo Burti boubou a bushshrike , described as Laniarius liberatus , in which the species description included DNA sequences from blood and feather samples.

Assuming there is no future question as to the status of such a species, the absence of a type specimen does not invalidate the name, but it may be necessary in the future to designate a neotype for such a taxon, should any questions arise. However, in the case of the bushshrike, ornithologists have argued that the specimen was a rare and hitherto unknown color morph of a long-known species, using only the available blood and feather samples.

While there is still some debate on the need to deposit actual killed individuals as type specimens, it can be observed that given proper vouchering and storage, tissue samples can be just as valuable should disputes about the validity of a species arise. The various types listed above are necessary [ citation needed ] because many species were described one or two centuries ago, when a single type specimen, a holotype, was often not designated.

Also, types were not always carefully preserved, and intervening events such as wars and fires have resulted in destruction of original type material. The validity of a species name often rests upon the availability of original type specimens; or, if the type cannot be found, or one has never existed, upon the clarity of the description. The ICZN does not always demand a type specimen for the historical validity of a species, and many "type-less" species do exist.

The current edition of the Code, Article There are many other permutations and variations on terms using the suffix "-type" e. However, some of these categories can potentially apply to genuine type specimens, such as a neotype; e. The term fixation is used by the Code for the declaration of a name-bearing type, whether by original or subsequent designation.

Each genus must have a designated type species the term "genotype" was once used for this but has been abandoned because the word has become much better known as the term for a different concept in genetics.

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The description of a genus is usually based primarily on its type species, modified and expanded by the features of other included species. The generic name is permanently associated with the name-bearing type of its type species. Ideally, a type species best exemplifies the essential characteristics of the genus to which it belongs, but this is subjective and, ultimately, technically irrelevant, as it is not a requirement of the Code. If the type species proves, upon closer examination, to belong to a pre-existing genus a common occurrence , then all of the constituent species must be either moved into the pre-existing genus, or disassociated from the original type species and given a new generic name; the old generic name passes into synonymy and is abandoned unless there is a pressing need to make an exception decided case-by-case, via petition to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

A type genus is that genus from which the name of a family or subfamily is formed. As with type species, the type genus is not necessarily the most representative, but is usually the earliest described, largest or best known genus. It is not uncommon for the name of a family to be based upon the name of a type genus that has passed into synonymy; the family name does not need to be changed in such a situation.