Transfusion Services

Hello, I am looking to purchase a cell washer to wash RBC units and Apheresis platelet units. I checked with Terumo and with Haemonetics and Terumo informed me that they are sunsetting the Cobe per the FDA due to issues with parts, so they will no longer sell it or support it in the US. Haemonetics ACP215 is not validated to wash AS-3 RBC units. We only have AS-3 in our blood bank. Can anyone provide a suggestion for a reliable and FDA approved cell washer that can wash AS-3 RBC units and platelets? Thank you, Nibal

Hello. Our institution wants to start stocking low titer group O whole blood. My questions are as follows: 1) What kind of compatibility testing is required. Can an electronic crossmatch be performed? SafeTrace TX will perform ELXM with an "O" to an "A" patient and call it incompatible, whereas when we did an immediate spin crossmatch, we determined it to be compatible. 2) What is your titer cutoff for these low titer whole bloods? Thank you!

For those that do not irradiate on site, do you keep an irradiated unit on hand or do you keep a regular cmv= fresh unit on hand? We get a new unit every 2 weeks and we rarely transfuse infants but we have a unit on hand just in case

Is anyone willing to share their procedure for preadmit specimens? We are planning on extending our retention from 8 to 28 days for crossmatches. At the present time we use Blood Bank armbands and serologically test. We have a request from a new provider to extend for 28 days and found that it is not as easy as it sounds! Some hospitals repeat the ABORH and the preadmit questions prior to surgery. All help with this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, I am a new bloodbanker and forgive me in advance for asking this question. My question is….I am afraid when reading tube agglutination I will miss a weak reaction and call it negative. I think it’s my technique. When I am reading a tube reaction after centrifuging ….I hold the tube so that the button is facing upwards and then I gently swirl while watching the button to see how it falls off. I look for any granules. Is this right ? Are there any tips on how not to over shake a tube and miss the weak agglutination . Thanks for reading my question.

Do you guys use a tag gun for labeling units with patient information? If so, do you have a procedure or any research on it? My manager is concerned with piercing the platelet bags, since they do not have the small holes already, and that jeopardizing the bag/products.

Is there or will there be a new edition of The Blood Group Antigen FactsBook, 3rd edition, 2012? Does anyone know?

When you have to dilute a RBC to 200ml with a hematocrit of 35% with 0.9% saline, is there a formula to follow?

Do you have policy in place to cover "deviation" from O negative to O positive males and females outside of childbearing age? Do you notify attending physician?

What problems do you encounter in transfusion services that is good to be topic of study/research?

Hemo bioscience has developed a new polyagglutinability kit and is in the stages of validation and testing. Previously we had access to Tn polyagglutinable cells. However we lost access to the donor who had acquired Tn polyagglutinability. Does anyone have access to a patient or donor that is exhibiting Polyagglutinability? We manufacture Neuraminidase treated cells here so we have the general T polyagglutinability covered. Thanks in advance. Noel Brown President Hemobioscience Inc.

"Anti-CD36 (anti-GPIV) Frequently Interferes with Routine Red Blood Cell Antibody Testing in Patients of African Descent" is a plenary session at AABB this fall. I can't find any useful information on it through an internet search. Does anyone have any references or information on this, which I assume will be a therapy at some point.

Hi, We are a trauma center and everytime we get an alpha trauma code, we issue uncrossmatch blood in a cooler, we give them 4 PRBC and 4 FFP using a form manually. We handwrite every unit and if they did not use the blood at all, they return the units and we have to rewrite them again. It is too much of work in rewriting, we can get 4 alphas in a shift and imagine hand writing it. It is a 2 page carbon copy form and the original has the back form for nurses to write the vitals. What do you do in your lab?

I am in the process of evaluating performing cord blood testing on gel. We perform ABO/Rh type and DAT on babies born to type O and Rh Negative mothers. Our current testing is by tube and the DAT is evaluated microscopically. I was concerned that we might end up with more positive DATs in gel, but I'm finding the opposite! Almost all of the positive DATs with weak (microscopic) reactions are coming up negative in the gel (IgG). If we convert to gel and "miss" these weak reactions, will that be significant? Do others read DATs microscopically? Are any of you doing Cord Blood testing in gel?

Is everyone else having a difficult time finding suppliers that still collect CPDA-1 units? Or, is it just us here in Southeastern US?

Hi all! I was wondering how other facilities/hospitals label their blood units after crossmatching? Does anyone use label stickers and place it on the unit or just use crossmatch tags in paper?

I've switched sides from mostly transfusion to 100% donor services. When I was on the transfusion side, we only provided Adsol units to our babies, which included a 50+ bed NICU unit. Do you still provide CPDA-1 units for those that transfuse babies, or have you switched to Adsol? If you're comfortable, please let me know what facility you are with and how large your NICU is. Thank you

2 units O positive trauma blood were requested and sent to the ER. After back from ER, found that the patient had a historical Anti-E while doing the history check. The ER MD was notified and after he found out that the workup would take 45min to an hour he said to continue with the trauma blood (Hgb 5.3, not sure of clinical condition). Hindsight, I could have said about 15 min to screen for E neg units but I didn't know if the patient had made new antibodies and was just thinking about the panels and identification. Anyway, 1 out of the 2 units was E pos (incompatible). The MD and pathologist were notified. Going forward, how long would it take for a delayed transfusion…

Need your advice...we currently require a 2-person check for infusion of plasma protein product. Is this necessary? A 2-person check is required in our standards for blood and blood components so was this simply extended to PPP or is there documentation somewhere that says we can perform a 1-person check?

In this modern world where cold storage of platelets is now accepted by FDA and almost all are pathogen-reduced, what do we do with a room temperature stored platelet that lacks swirl? Give it to a bleeding patient like cold-stored platelets? Do you reject platelets that arrive from the supplier within appropriate temperature but lacking swirl? Do you have an assessment that helps you decide they are okay to use?

Has anyone considered how to build for cold stored platelets in their BBIS? SafeTraceTx at least, has expected temperature ranges for products on return from issue or delivery so we couldn't very well lump cold stored platelets in with other platelets. I guess we could build an entirely new product class with its own temperature range. Not that we are going to get cold-stored platelets anytime soon, much as we would love the 14-day shelf life. We are too small and remote to keep a dual inventory for oncology vs. trauma patients. I'm just curious how others plan to solve this issue. After all, the driving force of our lives is keeping our computers happy, right? Now…

Anyone using Meditech for their blood bank module here? If so, do you have a reference range for antibody screen that appears on the provider's reports? Our DOH (NY) requires a reference range for all test results, and I am not really satisfied with Meditech customer service answer (ie to attach manually a reference range everytime an ABS is resulted...). Just wondering what everyone else is doing. Thank you! Helen

I’m looking at the Sahara dry plasma thawers. Does anyone know about how long it takes to thaw 2 units of FFP in these?

Are there any blood banks out there who do their titers in gel on the Ortho Vision platforms? I have some questions about PT testing, correlation/competency, and testing cutoffs. We are attempting to bring our titers for Anti-A/Anti-B onto the Vision so that all techs can run and result them for our ABO incompatible solid organ transplants. Thank you!

In the post-partum workup that has the fetal screen in it... I've never seen the battery NOT include at least a screen as well. I can't find any requirements for what it does or doesn't have to include. Do you include a screen as well, or just the fetal bleed screen? Am I missing some sort of accreditation checklist item?