Blood tubes should be labeled before drawing blood

Blood tubes labeling is an almost unavoidable procedure in clinical and laboratory practice. This preanalytical activity typically entails attaching to the primary blood tube an adhesive paper label, which contains demographic data, specific information about the tests that will be performed on that sample along with other potentially useful data. This information is typically conveyed within a printed barcode, which is then read by preanalytical or analytical workstations interfaced with the laboratory information system (LIS) (1).