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Welcome to this fantastic site Melissa Laufer. ENJOY!

Hi! Wondering if someone can help me. My BioMed Team only calculates g force on our centrifuges. When we had the old Ortho Centrifuge, the User Manual Stated on the second page " The OLD MTS Centrifuge™ Model 5150-60 will reach a speed of 895 ±25 RPM. (revolutions per minute); 80-90 RCF (Relative Centrifugal Force)" However, I am unable to find this information anywhere for the 2-in-1 Centrifuge Incubator Model ( I am attaching image). Now, I have a calculation to convert, and I did measure the radius. But here's the thing: I'm not 100% sure if I am measuring the radius correctly, and 2- I would love to have something in writing from Ortho, like in the previous manual. Does anyone have any information, or can direct me somewhere? I reached out to Ortho, and not only do they not know the g force in rcf, they also don't know their centrifuge radius either. Thank you to anyone that can hep!! g = (1.118 x 10-5) x R x S2 Where g is the relative centrifugal force , R is the radius of the rotor in centimeters and S is the speed of the centrifuge in revolutions per minute (RPM). The follow table is a simple reference for common rotor sizes and their RCF values in units of times gravity (x g). For example, an experiment requires a sample to centrifuged at 5,000g and the centrifuge that is available has a rotor of 9cm, using the table below, the centrifuge needs to be run at a speed of 7,000rpm as this gives an RCF of 4930 x g. Using the formula the precise speed would be 7,049rpm. The OLD MTS Centrifuge™ Model 5150-60 will reach a speed of 895 ±25 RPM. (revolutions per minute); 80-90 RCF (Relative Centrifugal Force) The New Ortho-Clinical Diagnostic’s 2 in 1 Centrifuge-Incubator Workstation is 1032 rpm + 10 rpm which is ??

I'm not looking at staying with Ortho long enough to warrant messing with their new QC set. I am phasing out gel antigen and going back to tube. We do maybe 5 antigen types per month so it's generally faster to do in tube for what we use and techs prefer the simplicity. I would recommend against trying to use tube reagent on the vision. Firstly, it's against manufacturer's instructions. Second, you'd have to rig the vision to use the proper reagent and buffer cards, if you can even make this happen. If you do this you will need a whole validation study to prove your method outside of what the manufacturer recommends. And if you're AABB, there are new validation and risk analysis studies you'd have to provide. Just buy the cards.

Hello Melissa Laufer, Welcome to PathLabTalk. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Melissa Laufer joined on the 05/16/2024. View Member

My hospital is developing/updating their response to a Mass Casualty. We are a 250-bed community hospital with limited blood product availability, a busy OR, ER and very busy L&D. What are some guidelines/suggestions from other Blood Banks with similar capacity? The project lead just wants a cooler of blood in the ED but I am uncomfortable with that...

Well i guess quality just not there anymore. Like all things. Not caring we are endangering future life. Going with the odds. You are right. Only things matter any more are cost and convenience. No wonder they don’t really train any more theory etc. it’s all technician work now. 🤷‍♀️

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Thank you so much everyone!

We have no problem with this. I will connect you with our WellSky expert who built the system to work beautifully for us. Her name is Jill and her email is JHShaw@valleychildrens.org Please reach out to her and she can walk you through exactly how to do this. I will alert her to be expecting an email from you!

Not sure I can help your argument, as we give O pos immediately to all males and females over 50, for any amount of emergency products. If you're wanting to argue for O negs as the first products when the blood type is unknown, it may not be received well, as this is very much becoming no longer the norm across the country, as far as I know.

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We updated the Attribute description to 'IRRA or Equivalent' and 'CMV or Equivalent'.

That is my problem. There will be no educating by blood bank on educating drs with current mgr. AND this policy NOT related to inventory shortage. Could have 20 oneg units (15 is our normal desired inventory of oneg) and still won’t use oneg in massive. Though our policy states pick up 2 pc first. Then if they want more other products on demand. like I said drs use this as the old “give me 2 units oneg unxm” policy. BTW totally different from my last job just last year where each pack is picked up together as a unit. What argument could I present to try to get them to change the policy that those first 2 units should be oneg like any unxm with opos to follow if more unxm needed ? I’m old school where first we do no harm so this makes me feel we are harming and not caring. Very hard for this old lady. After 37 years of thinking antibody formation on purpose is not a good thing.

Ortho is sending us a free sample of their new QC kit, and it includes CcEc antigens appropriate to QC. Are you using the Rh CcEe gel cards or the additive reagent of Ortho's? I'm interested in whether we could use the tube anti-c on the Vision with neutral gel cards (or why we shouldn't).

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We do the same. In the past I tried to doctor samples for ABIDs, and they were either non-reactive or 4+ at immediate spin.

Yes, when there isn't a true massive, it is more likely the patient may make an antibody. That said, we have the same procedure here as you Kym: we give O pos to males and women over childbearing age for ANY emergent release red cells. If they only get 1 or 2 units, then so be it. This is part of the battle of using inventory appropriately and calling a code/massive appropriately....and never the twain shall meet.....

Technically, any sample you don't know the answer to is "blind" to you, so any regular patient with no history can be used for a blind blood type for example. Yes, for DAT and FMH it's harder, but we typically use the CAP samples as Bet'naSBB said, rather than try to make up samples that are not quite right.

It varies from no reaction to lethal hemolysis. Anti-D is not entirely predictable in causing severe hemolysis. But mostly bad stuff happens :). This is true to some extent for anti-A and anti-B, although these are more dangerous as they fix complement in vivo better than anti-D in general. Joe Bove (my original mentor) reported a case of a patient receiving multiple units that were ABO major incompatible with no reaction. Not typical, but illustrative of the variability.

Even without a transfusion reaction, the haptoglobin drops with transfusion of red cells. Lots of non-viable cells and free hemoglobin in many red cell transfusions. If you cannot see red urine, red plasma and a drop in hematocrit/failure to rise, it's not a hemolytic reaction. Haptoglobin plays almost no role in assessing hemolytic transfusion reactions, and, as mentioned, unless you measure it on the pre-transfusion sample as well, tells you almost nothing. LDH pre and post would be more useful in most cases. Don't bother with haptoglobin in most cases.

We use our CAP samples AFTER the results have been submitted and results have been received from CAP. We just finished assigning a BUNCH of "Internal Assessments" and "Method Comparisons" using our first batch of CAPs that we'd already received our results for. All these count as "blinds" for the staff. Instead of making 1 tech do the whole survey, we give each assignee one sample to do and then compare their results with those expected by CAP. works great! For FMH, we get two CAP "TMCAF" surveys per year. 1/2 the staff does the first and the other 1/2 the second so everyone gets a blind for FMH.