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I think we need to add an OMG emoji to our selections!

This is the best thread, EVER !!!! Keep it rolling, please.

True, but, for those unfamiliar with it, the agglutination seen with an anti-Sda is usually mixed-field (see the attached photograph - not a fantastic photograph, but I have "tarted it up" a bit - from the original paper, Macvie SI, Morton JA, Pickles MM. The Reactions and Inheritance of a New Blood Group Antigen, Sda. Vox Sang 1967; 13: 485-492).

Decades ago I worked w a tech who worked w Peter at NYBC. I had always looked under the scope (as that was how I was trained). I'd ask her to look at 2 or 3 or 4 cells stuck together microscopically. Her comment was always, "If you want to call that positive go ahead, but I'd call it negative." High anxiety to give up the scope but I did.

I have never understood this obsession with looking at reactions down a microscope in blood bank, except looking at things like a Kleihauer or when teaching, to show mixed-field reactions. The great Peter Issitt, not a bad roll model to have, wrote, many years ago now, a passage that I attach from page 69 of his "Applied Blood Group Serology" book, 3rd edition, 1985, Montgomery Scientific Press. That having been said, all reactions seen MUST be recorded, it is just that macroscopic reading is almost all that is ever required.

I just had to share this story...When I worked in a large teaching hospital we had a team of Transfusion Nurses who were responsible for drawing most samples and administering the transfusions. Occasionally, however, physicians (or interns/residents) would draw the samples. One afternoon we received an unlabeled sample drawn by a physician via courier. We contacted the physician and informed him a new sample would have to be drawn. He said he would come to the transfusion service and label it right away. We told him that was unacceptable, however, he insisted. While he was on his way, we put together several samples without labels and placed them in a rack. When he arrived, we presented the rack to him and told him to select the sample to label. He actually tried to feel each tube to find the warmest one and said that was the sample he sent. Obviously we did not allow the sample to be labeled. The story has been told many times!!!