Samples
Urgent Samples
Urgent samples are samples where a result is required within 1 hour. All samples from accident and emergency departments, neonatal units and clinical haematology wards, (or other samples when clearly indicated as urgent), are treated as urgent and will be processed within one hour of sample receipt.
Samples treated urgently in the department include:
- Urgent Full Blood Counts and ESRs
- Urgent Clotting Assays and D-Dimers
- Urgent Blood Films / All Malaria parasite requests*
- Urgent pre-operative sickle screen
(*All requests for Malaria parasites must state the recent travel history of the patient, in order for a risk assessment of the patient to be undertaken and assist parasite speciation).
High Risk Samples
Please note that due to the difficultly in clinically distinguishing Ebola virus disease (formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever) from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis, in certain cases, a limited number of diagnostic techniques will be available. As such, certain tests may be unavailable for these high-risk samples.
