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My favourite John Judd quote from a University of Michigan Symposium I heard him at. "Phenotypically matched RBC units for a corpse is not a medical breakthrough." If the patient needs blood get them blood, worry about the rest later. RIP John Judd

Danielle, I love the lights. When i'm feeling stressed, I come here and break em. If you haven't noticed, move over them with your mouse and they break with the most refreshing sound of glass breakage. I hope you all don't think less of me now...

Column Agglutination Technology (CAT) is superb at detecting IgG antibodies, and also at detecting certain "cold-reacting" antibodies (such as anti-I and (because of the pH of the column) anti-M, BUT the manufacturers themselves state quite freely, that they are not designed to detect all ABO mis-matches, because most ABO antibodies are IgM (anti-M are usually a mixture of IgM and IgG, but also react preferentially at a low pH).

I know of one hospital that switched to total automation (can’t remember the method or lab size). They had major issues and ended up having to send way too much to their reference lab (think anti-A1, IgM, rouleaux etc.) After a few months they changed back. As Cliff indicated above using automation as the primary method is sensible, just keep your manual methods as backup. Else expect a big increase in send out costs and time delays.

We did it easily by putting the gel card centrifuge in a 37C dry air incubator along with all the consumables. We waited 30 minutes to get all up to temp then did the testing. Worked great.