Blood tubes and their uses in veterinary diagnostics

• Blood collection tubes should ideally be filled in a specific sequence, in an effort to minimize or eliminate contamination and possible erroneous test results.
• When collecting specimen, allow tubes to be filled to the required level to allow for specimen/additive ratio necessary for accurate results:
  • Not applicable to serum tubes.
• Always invert tubes gently and adequately immediately after specimen collection to ensure that the latter is properly mix with the additive.
• Blood tubes are color coded for specific diagnostic test procedures based on the specific anticoagulant or additive in the tubes:
  • Color coding varies between laboratories.

Sodium citrate tubes

Heparin tubes

Plain tubes

Serum separator tube

EDTA tubes

Potassium oxalate and sodium fluoride

Sodium polyethanol sulfonate

Further Reading

Publications

Refereed Papers

• Recent references from PubMed and VetMedResource.
• Bowen R A & Remaley A T (2014) Interferences from blood collection tube components on clinical chemistry assays. Biochemia Medica 24 (1), 31-44 doi.org/10.11613/BM.2014.006 PubMed.

Other sources of information

• Aspinall R & Aspinall V (2013) Clinical Procedures. In: Small Animal Veterinary Practice. Elsevier Ltd
• Blood collection tubes and labelling guide - Animal health diagnostic centre.
• Vetlab supplies - specialists in veterinary laboratory supplies, West Sussex, UK.
• IDEXX Reference Laboratories. Sampling guide: http://www.idexx.co.uk accessed May 2018.