12-hour urine collection guide

Read these instructions and ask any questions your lab staff may have.

• Check the information on the sampler label that should to be correct.
• Choose a day and time for a 12-hour urine collection when you are at home or in a stable environment and avoid physical activity (running, stress, food deprivation, heavy exercise, etc.).
• If needed (according to your doctor advice) a few days back, consider special diet like eating or avoid certain foods such as tea, coffee, cocoa, vanilla and chocolate, drugs such as caffeine, epinephrine, levodopa, lithium, nitroglycerin, clonidine, imipramine, iodine contrast agent and iodine. …. (For urine VMA testing)

Select a time to start:

• Completely empty your bladder (pee) into the toilet.
• Write the time and date on the container label as the Start time and date. Next 12 hours The next time you pee and every time you pee for the next 12 hours
• Urinate (pee) into a clean, dry plastic container, for example a plastic cup.
• Pour all urine into the bottle every time.
• Close the lid of the bottle tightly after each urine specimen is added.
• If the bottle had liquid in it from the laboratory, swirl bottle after each urine specimen is added.
• Please keep the bottle upright in a cool, dark place.
• At the end of the collection, collect a last urine specimen exactly 12 hours after the Start time. Please try to urinate (pee) even if you do not feel an urge. Completely empty your bladder.
• Please keep the bottle upright in a cool, dark place and deliver bottle and requisition to the laboratory as soon as possible.

Do not urinate directly into the collection container (some containers contain acid as a preservative which can damage your genital area).

The container you choose for initial collection and transfer to the main container should be wide open and large enough for the entire urine to discharge.

Be careful not to lose any amount of 12-hour urine (failure to collect even a small amount of urine can invalidate and confuse the results).

The container has a label on which your height and weight should be recorded. Make sure this tag is not tampered.

In cases where you have two 12-hour urine containers, collect two samples on two different days and deliver each container to the laboratory on the same day (do not store the containers and deliver them together).

The 12-hour urine, which was not delivered on the same day of collection, will not be delivered by the laboratory and will require re-sampling.

For delivery, place the sample in the toilet and inform the reception or sampling staff.