**9.4 Transportation of diagnostic specimens**

With the increasing specimen loads and collection centers now at the remotest parts of the country, transportation of the pathology specimen plays a crucial role in timely diagnosis. Thus specimen transport needs special care and attention to detail and appropriately filled laboratory requisition form guidelines that are usually issued by the national authorities, e.g., Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) or Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the World Health Organization (WHO), are to be strictly followed.

For any hand-carried specimen that is transported over a short distance, the specimen needs to be placed upright in appropriate bottles with sufficient fixatives in appropriate racks. For long-distance cross country or different countries, the triple packing system has been advocated specially for infectious substances [12].

The triple packing system contains three layers as (1) primary container/ receptacle that has the specimen and is leak proof with a screw cap and (2) secondary container that is durable, waterproof and made of metal/plastic with a screw cap. It contains absorptive material, and details of the specimen are pasted on the outside of the container. (3) The outer packing or tertiary container is made of wood or card-box and withstands the transportation shocks. Dry ice is normally kept between the outer two containers with provision for carbon dioxide gas release vents. A biohazard label is a must [12].

## **9.5 Basic criteria for rejection of specimens**

A laboratory should always consider strict rules on the basis of which an oral specimen could be rejected. This important decision must be taken with full conviction of doing the right thing to save time and laboratory resources. Such decision should be taken when the following criteria are not fulfilled:


**57**

**Author details**

Krishna Sireesha Sundaragiri1

Sciences, Bengaluru, India

Dental College), Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

provided the original work is properly cited.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

\*Address all correspondence to: sksireesha@yahoo.co.in

*Methods of Collection and Transport of Materials to Laboratory from Oral and Dental Tissue…*

Thus a continuous effort must be made in order to ensure proper collection and transportation of clinical specimens by all involved. A sound understanding of contemporary principles and practices of various methods of collection and transport of specimens is of critical importance to the clinician dealing with oral

The author K.S.S would like to thank her teachers Dr. Jyoti Chawda and Dr.

\*, Soumya Makarla<sup>2</sup>

1 Department of Oral Pathology, RUHS College of Dental Sciences (Government

2 Department of Pathology and Microbiology, Krishnadevaraya College of Dental

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

and Bharat Sankhla1

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92677*

7.Incorrect storage

**10. Conclusions**

8.Hemolyzed sample [13]

and maxillofacial infections.

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflict of interest**

Raksha Shah.

6.Contamination of specimen

*Methods of Collection and Transport of Materials to Laboratory from Oral and Dental Tissue… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92677*

