Order of Blood Draw / Blood Transfer

The 4 Most Common Blood Collection Tubes

 

 

sodium citrate

(blue) 

 SST

(gold)

 PST
lithium heparin
(mint/light green)

EDTA

(lavender/purple) 

Order of Draw


Order of Draw is the order in which tubes are filled directly, using the evacuated tube blood collection method.


  • Blood tubes that are collected out of order may contain spill-over anticoagulants or additives and cause erroneous results.
  • Examples  a lavender tube drawn before a SST tube may give elevated potassium results.

 

Order of Draw



1 Clear - non-additive discard tube

 2

 Blood culture bottle

 3

 Yellow - SPS (for AFB blood collection)

 4

 Royal blue with red band on label - glass tube without additive 

 5

 Reg GLASS - no additive
  6  Light blue - sodium citrate and other coagulation tubes
  7  Black GLASS - citrate tube for ESR

 8

 Red plastic - clot activator 

 9

 Gold SST - clot activator
 10  Dark green GLASS with rubber stopper for trace elements

11

 Dark green - sodium heparin

 12

 Light green (mint) PST - lithium heparin

 13

 Royal Blue with lavender band on label - EDTA

 14

 Lavender - EDTA 

 15

 Pale Yellow - ACD

 16

 Gray - sodium fluoride and potassium oxalate

Order of Transfer

The same order is used when transferring blood from a syringe to the evacuated tubes as it is with Order of Draw.



 Do not push on the plunger of the syringe when tubes are filling.  The vacuum of the tubes will draw the sample from the syringe until the tube is filled.  The tube lid may pop off due to excess positive pressure in the tube, and/or hemolysis can occur.