Collecting Unplanned Primary Specimens

This articles covers 2 methods that may be used to collect unplanned specimen(s):

Collecting an unplanned primary specimen

1. Navigate to appropriate specimen record & event/visit

2. Choose ‘Add Specimen’ from the relevant ‘Visit’

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   Add unplanned specimen

3. Complete the mandatory fields and any optional fields that have data.

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4. Example: 0.5 gm of non-malignant, fresh tissue collected from the left side of the stomach would be entered with a Type = ‘Fresh Tissue’. The anatomic site would be ‘Stomach, NOS’ (NOS is not otherwise specified). Laterality can be recorded, if known. If Pathology Status isn’t known, it can be recorded following receipt of the pathology report.

5. Complete Collection and Received Details. Most fields default to logged-in user and current date/time. Change if otherwise.

6. Container and Procedure fields include a list of dropdown values to choose from.

7. To create aliquots, click the box and specify the aliquots and their type.

8. Enter aliquot type and details. Note that if a different sample type is chosen, the system will create a derived sample of the new type and then create aliquots from that. In this example case, the fresh tissue will be split into two frozen tissue aliquots of 0.25g and one fixed cell block of 0.5g. Note that if a tissue sample is separated after collection, different sections of the tissue can have different pathologies.

Collecting Multiple unplanned specimens

1. If more than one sample is to be collected with the exact same characteristics, enter the number of samples to create.

2. To collect multiple similar specimens use:

   1. Add Another: Begins entering second specimen from scratch.

   2. Copy Last: Copies all characteristics added to first specimen. Allows editing of any fields, such as anatomic site or quantity.

   3. Copy Last (including Aliquots): Copies all characteristics of last specimen along with the aliquots specified.

3. Example:

   1. Record a similar fresh tissue collection from the duodenum, choose ‘Copy Last (including Aliquots)’

   2. Edit the anatomic Site to ‘Duodenum’, Laterality to ‘Not specified’ .

4. Edit aliquots to indicate 2 frozen tissue aliquots each of which has a different pathology and a fixed cell block with metastatic tissue.

5. Choose ‘Next’ to view the summary of the data entered.

6. Choose location where specimens will be stored and choose ‘Submit’ to collect.