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Malcolm, as long as they wear those funny hairnets, I don't care who is flipping my burgers. Scott

Every patient 5 days regardless of situation and that five days is for minutes. If the sample is drawn 8th of June 2016 10:52 p.m. it expires 13th of June 10:52 p.m. We don't ask any questions and make no exceptions. (Well... never say never in immunohaematology )

Sorry for late answer! In Finland every donor is tested for ABO RhD and K. Other phenotypes are marked on the unit after tested two times (two donations). The most commonly tested other phenos are Rh CcEe, then comes Kidd, Duffy MNS (perhaps around 3000 donors/year) and Cw and for the last but not least Cx, Ula and Lwb (plus ~100 donors/year are tested for Lsa, Ana and WESa). That might sound a lot but we have centralized our production into one place in Finland. Donating sites are all over but blood products are only made, supplied and delivered from one center that is situated in our capitol. Small country

We do 7 days presurgical patients. In-patients: 3 days, day of collection is day 0 (i.e. 96 hours).

Hi Amy, welcome to the site by the way. I ditto what Mary and Malcolm said. He could also be an A3B. A2B or A3B, he should also show reactivity with anti-H. I would not consider this a typing discrepancy as your front and backtype match; the reagent anti-A is just a bit weaker than expected. In any event, there is absolutely no reason not to give him AB. Give him enough A1B, and you might even get that anti-A reaction up to 3 or 4+! Phil

Hi Amy, My first thought was, why did the overnight person give group A blood, rather than group AB? But, perhaps you do not carry group AB in your stock. Between 1 and 2% of the random White and Black population are A2B, and of those, only 25% produce an anti-A1. An anti-A1 that is clinically significant (reacts at 37oC) is disappearingly rare, so I wouldn't worry about it, but why switch to group O? The ABO antigens are not direct gene products, but are the result of the action of transferase enzymes that ARE direct gene products (give or take a bit of post-translational jiggery pokery!) and the A transferase and the B transferase compete with one another to put their own terminal sugar residues on to the Type 1 and Type 2 backbones, and it is not unusual for the A antigen to be weaker than the B (so that an A1 reacts more strongly with anti-A than does an A1B, and an A2 reacts more strongly with anti-A than does an A2B). This patient is also an elderly oncology patient, and both age and his condition can affect the expression of ABO antigens. I would switch back to group A for transfusion if I were you (or, better still, AB).

We are not AABB accredited; we are inspected by CAP, but the concept is the same. Like Cliff, it took a few years, but I went through all my SOP's and all the regulations. I did it in several steps. I read through every SOP and used the "footnote" tool in MS Word. [insert-->Reference-->Footnote] to tag each statement (or heading, or title) in an SOP that was directly related to a specific regulation with the reference number of the regulation. For example: "The sample must be labeled at minumum with the name, medical record number, date and time of collection, and the collector's employee ID1". Once you add the footnote in Word, it adds the little number and it takes you to the end of the document, or the bottom of the page, where I typed the specific reference "AABB SBBTS 5.11.2, CAP TRM.40230". I put all of my Word Document SOP's in the same folder. Then, I went through the regulations one at a time and I used the "find" feature in windows (like how you search for a file) to search for each regulation number. If I found it, I marked it off. If I didn't find it, then I knew that this regulation had not been specifically addressed. For all the ones that had not been specifically addressed, I had to create policy or modify existing policy to make sure each had been fully addressed. (This took a LONG time.) Now, when the new edition comes out, I use the crosswalk of changes and the "find" feature to quickly find the location of that particular regulation in my SOP's so that I can make adjustments as necessary - or update the reference numbers. This has worked wonderfully for me! It is also excellent at inspection time when you get nervous and can't think - just use the find feature and your own policies will tell you (and the inpsector) how you meet that standard and where to look for documentation. It's also a great help to your staff if an inspector should come when you are out of town. They don't have to know every little thing - they can just look it up if they don't know. Good luck!