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You can even mess up even after death.
I had a neuro case case on a weekend once - rabies was a differential but very, verrrry low index of suspicion in my opinion. I took and submitted a wrong/incomplete part of the brain to the state lab. It was my first weekend on as an attending in a different state (different labs sometimes want slightly different sections but that is not an excuse), and I don't know what was going through my head. Rabies cases were like second nature to me based on where I trained, but for whatever reason I blanked and dropped the ball.
Everyone in contact with that animal had to have post-exposure vaccination series simple because it was a a "not negative" (i.e. what they tested was negative but since they didn't receive a complete samples, they couldn't rule it out 100%.) I felt like a complete idiot.
This may be a silly question, but can you just submit the whole brain and let them take the sections they want? Or will they get fussy because they have to do more work?