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I just saw this seminar being offered by Bio-Rad with our own, infamous, Malcolm Needs as the presenter. I registered and thought I'd pass the word to all of us here. Here is the link:https://info.bio-rad.com/ww-IHD-transfusion-w-registration-lp2.html?elq_mid=48765&elq_cid=10201434&elqCampaignId=30837&utm_campaign=30837&utm_source=eloquaEmail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Email 13ER EM-R-CM-385201-FY21-TCHS-AWEN_BR-JRNL-TRF News 19 Nov&elqTrackId=6ecbbea5f2bb46849981687404578a8e&elq=7c5f74470efa434dbd4351e512f7ae7a&elqaid=48765&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3

Very proud to have received this through the post earlier this week, to go with being elected to Fellowship of the British Blood Transfusion Society earlier this year.

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.

Ok, here we go. First is from a personnel stand point. When promoted from with in you are no longer "one of the guys". This means that some of the staff will try to leverage your close friendship which in turn will cause problems with others. Both you and the rest of the staff need to recognize that things have changed on a personal level, at least in the work place. This does not have to be dramatic and should not be, but it is real. Some can do this and some find it very difficult. Now, when coming from outside your are exactly that, an outsider. Now the level of this can vary immens

I would pull the unit from inventory and contact the supplier. They should have the resources to investigate the problem with the donor.

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

I was immensely honoured to receive this through the post today (with a lapel badge).

Have you thought of hiding his glasses?

I agree with you that it does sound daft, but I am in the position to tell you why this is the recommendation, despite it apparently being contrary to BSH Guidelines, as I was still working when the decision was made (albeit, I don't agree with it!). The huge majority of hospital blood transfusion laboratories now use column agglutination technology (CAT) as their "first line of attack", and many of them use the CAT that uses gel in the column, rather than glass beads. This form of CAT is particularly adept at detecting anti-M in plasma by IAT, even though the anti-M may not actually be

I would not be performing one hour post-transfusion vital signs unless the patient has signs or symptoms that require assessment. I would not be reacting to one hour post-transfusion data unless they were consonant with a transfusion reaction. If fever was the only sign or symptom, it's probably not transfusion related in the vast majority of cases. Routine vital signs in the absence of a clinical rationale are a problem, not a solution.

Can I just point out here that no one serological test, or even combination of tests will detect all weak / variant Ds . And that includes women who test D+ but actually have a partial D and may make anti-D antibodies. It is SO important to know your reagents, and know what your anti-D reagents will and will not detect

What you are identifying is almost certainly a strong anti-H in an Oh individual. However, if the individual requires a transfusion, you will need to perform differential allo-adsorption (or something similar) to identify any other underlying clinically significant atypical antibodies (you can ignore any underlying Lewis antibodies, which are commonly also present).

to be fair techniques in the early 80s were not what they are today, neither for blood grouping nor for antibody screening/identification. Methods were not standardised. The number of drops of serum (almost always serum) to the amount of red cells could vary from 2:1 to 8:1. The concentration of the red cells could be anything from about 2% to almost 10% - and often pooled. And pooling was one of the main reason for checking under the microscope. Incubation time varied too - often depending on the length of your coffee break or lunch break. LISS was in its infancy. Washing was done by ha

A new tee shirt I gave myself for my birthday. I should have had a shave and lost about 70lbs first, but hey!

I agree with exlimey. I once had an anti-E that reacted by LISS IAT, but try as we might, we could never get it to react with papain-treated red cells. We doubted the specificity, and so we sent it to Joyce Poole at the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory to have a look at it, and she confirmed both the specificity and the fact that it was non-reactive with papain-treated red cells. Anything is possible, as the antibodies refuse to read the damned text books! In the UK, it is almost a sine qua non that an "enzyme panel" is put up simultaneously with the IAT panel Joh

To this I will add, pick your battles carefully. Make sure they are worth fighting. If you came from outside the facility be very judicious when using the phrase, "The way we did it"! Changing something to the way you did it else where is not necessarily a change for the better just because it makes you comfortable. Make sure you understand your new facility's processes before trying to incorporate sweeping changes. As I noted above, much of my advise would depend on if you came from outside or promoted from within. This is just one golden nugget for you to consider.

When I first joined the wonderful world of blood transfusion, with particular reference to blood group serology, at the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory, when it was in London, my mentors were Dr Carolyn Giles and Joyce Poole. In those days, yes, we did use microscopes (albeit with very little magnification) and, given that we were using human-derived antisera, and the fact that I was anxious not to miss anything, I often got Joyce to check my sightings down the microscope. These were invariably "kissing cells", as you suggest, and Joyce christened them "Malcolm weaks", a term

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 t

Definitely enough story lines for a mini-series! These are all possible stories that could happen to any of us. Being in direct contact with physicians (who know everything) and nurses (who believe policy is not practice) and providing products that could be life saving or harmful to patients and parts of the process is out of BBs control can be very stressful for technologists. And sometimes is hard to get new technologists to work in our field. With providing administration with some of these "real" scenarios and the possible medical-legal-pr implications I was able to acqui

When we first started using Gel, my techs would point out the shadows or 'jumpies' as they called them. I'd suggest 'Run the screen again using maxtime.' If they still saw the shadows, I'd just let them run a panel (maxtime) and go crazy with the results. After a while we all learned to ignore those reactions. Keep in mind, there are always a certain percent of any given cell population (especially stored reagent cells) that are just not going to make it smoothly to the very bottom solely because of steric hindrance (broken, aged, crenated, tagged for destruction, etc.).

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.

When tube testing was all we had, my moto was; "when in doubt, shake it out!" One of the first things I did as transfusion supervisor at a new facility was convince the medical director that we needed to stop using the microscope for routine testing. It was much harder to convince the rest of the staff. I couldn't remove the microscopes from the department because we were doing KBs at the time and I'm pretty sure a few of the "older" staff still used them for routine testing when I wasn't looking. Once again inertia is proven to be the most powerful force in the universe!

I have even gone so far as to tell the nurse taking care of the patient that when they learned the patient's name and not the room number to give me a call back and we will discuss the patient at that time.

Not sure about just one answer - We had a labeled Rh negative RBC from the ARC that retyped as Rh positive. Upon investigation, it was found the Immucor anti-D reagent we use for retyping had anti-Crawford while the ARC automated process for D typing used an Ortho reagent which was from a different clone. Not very unlikely but certainly more than one answer.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt - personnel will always be the greatest challenge. Not enough, not well enough trained, will they follow the SOPs (in spite of the continuous Competency - truly a pain!), will they show up, will they get along with each other........... Be prepared for that challenge and take advice from a good manager, if you are blessed with one. Always consider that mistakes may stem from a misunderstanding of what is written in the procedure or the procedure might need a tweak to eliminate a "process" problem.. Approach mistakes from the point of view - "Is it a process

There is absolutely no scientific or clinical reason that a vaccine could not be stored with frozen blood components. That doesn't mean you won't get some overly officious inspector who will decide it's a bad idea. But currently there are no regulatory or accreditation issues that I am aware of.

Maintaining enough staff. Too many people use a large facility as a stepping stone to another job for more money. Having Senior Management understand the difference between a Blood Bank and Clinical Lab - we're not the same. Maintaining inventory. There is always a shortage of something. Competency Assessment - huge pet peeve of mine. You go to a talk by _____________ and hear them pontificate on how we all make competency assessment so hard on ourselves. Then say something silly like, all you need to do is watch them do a _______ proficiency testing sample, they will be pro

The age old problem of how do you make people pay attention to the details...If you figure this out, let me know. I haven't yet. Do you not have an "IRRADIATED RBC" product in your dictionary that the physician could have chosen? That puts the responsibility on them, where it should lie. A comment is not an order and, if they are relying on that, they are forcing your techs into a position of failure. I would suggest you add an irradiated product order to your dictionary. If the physician wants that product, they must order that product that way.

Couldn't agree more, particularly, certainly in my own experience, many inspectors have a minimal amount of experience in the field (particularly Reference Laboratories), but feel they have to comment to justify their employment, even though they don't actually understand or know what they are talking about; not all, but far too many.

Inspectors are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. I tend to agree with those who put forth do what you are comfortable doing for validation and/or QC. If you, your staff and pathologists are ok with your process then an Inspector (AABB or CAP) can have an opinion but they cannot tell you to stop or defend a deficiency. If your documentation has merit then you have a strong case of how you use your expired red cells or antisera for the care of your patients. We all do the best we can with what we have to work with.

I am a worker from/in the UK, but if TRM.40780 says, "Maternal RhIG candidacy assessment must include the identification of weak-D phenotype newborns", that is exactly what it means. It doesn't say "should" instead of "must", and it doesn't say, "until you give up because you are bored, because you have never found one"! Yes, such types are rare, but they do happen, and they can cause the mother to produce an anti-D (of sorts). These antibodies are not usually particularly clinically significant in terms of further pregnancies - but the word "usually" is the important one in that senten

The answer is a bit more complicated. If there is no target for %S, there is no need to test for hemoglobin S in donor blood. In other words, if the transfusion is purely for anemia, not treatment of acute chest syndrome or prevention of stroke, there is usually no target %S being used by the treating physician. The reason for testing for S in the donor is not the risk to the patient, but because transfusing S containing blood can confuse the calculation of % S overall. It's probably unnecessary because the %S contribution of a single unit of S heterozygous red cells in an exchange transfus

Anti-Lea CAN be clinically significant, but it is very rare for it to so be, and it tends to be self-limiting. For it to be clinically significant it has to be IgG and/or complement activating, and it is self limiting because, of course, the Lewis antigens are soluble. This means that they will be in any plasma remaining on the red cells in the unit, and these soluble antigens will inhibit the patient's anti-Lea in vivo. You can usually continue to transfuse the same unit that caused the problem after a while, with no further problems. MIND YOU, you have to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that it wa

exlimey, I would most certainly agree with your first comment. In the VERY old days, when I was merely middle aged, and we only had access to tube tests and reagents, including AHG, and techniques (such as tile techniques), we didn't kill patients by the thousand, so techniques that are a little less sensitive than are available these days, will not necessarily condemn the patient to a certain and painful death, despite the deafening shouts of those who are gainfully (and, in many cases, VERY gainfully) employed within the neo-science of quality for quality's sake (we needed to pull up our so

This is an almost impossible question to answer, as it is ALWAYS the responsibility of the physician looking after the patient to perform a risk assessment as to which he or she thinks is the higher risk - viz is it a higher risk to go ahead with the transfusion, or is it a higher risk to leave the patient without a transfusion? He or she will take advice from such professionals as the Pathologist, but, in the end, only they can take the decision. That having been said, it also depends whether any or all of those antibodies listed are detectable in the present sample, or whether some are

Yes indeed different pH, different suppliers may explain such a behavior (some anti-M are enhanced with acidification of plasma). In addition, Anti-M often shows dosage effect but I believe you have antigen M double dose cells on your panel too. What are the phenotype of the 2 cells reacting in screening and the one not reacting? Is your patient antigen M negative? It also exists the anti-M1 (the M1 antigen belongs to the MN CHO collection) that reacts with some M positive cells and stronger with M/N positive cells (M1 is expressed on M positive cells) and it can be, though

It sounds remarkably like one of your screening cells is expressing a low prevalence antigen that is not expressed on your panel cells. Antibodies directed against low prevalence antigens are actually quite common, but they are rarely detected because red cells expressing the cognate antigen are so rare. I wouldn't expend too much time or energy trying to sort out the exact specificity. In all cases of such an antibody, as long as you cross-match by the same method as you used in detecting the presence of the antibody in the first place, it would be quite safe to give cross-match co

I've been searching for the powerpoint I made of the occurrence I wanted to share but I must have stored it on an external hard drive that crashed and was unrecoverable. (That's my excuse anyway.) Consequently it was long ago and my memory is fuzzy on the details but in this case the details is not the point I'm attempting to convey. Bottom line was that 2 units of blood were sent via pneumatic tube to ICU for 2 different patients. No, the units were not in the same tube, they were sent 10-15 minutes apart. The units went to the wrong patients and the proper patient identification protocol

Yes, but DVI donors need to be typed as D+. Donors are not patients.

When I got to bed last night, I suddenly realised that I may have missed out a fairly obvious cause, as I had not taken into account the fact that the patients were all pregnant. I just wonder if these patients have all made anti-Lea and anti-Leb, as it is not unusual for the Lewis antigens to "disappear" in pregnancy, and quite often they transiently make Lewis antibodies. If none of the cells you are using are themselves Le(a-b-), then this antibody mixture (actually, it isn't a mixture, but anti-Lea+b) can look like an antibody directed against a high prevalence antigen. If you c

I would just replace the battery and not tell anyone.

The British Society for Haematology (BSH) have just issued an updated version of their "Guidelines on the use of irradiated blood components" (actually on 9th October 2020). The recommendations for patients who have received allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is as follows. "All recipients (adult and paediatric) of allogeneic HSCT should receive irradiated blood components from the time of initiation of conditioning chemo/radiotherapy. The recommendation applies for all conditions where HSCT is indicated regardless of the underlying diagnosis. Irradiated

Manufacturers calibrate the electronics and provide the certificate on the assumption of power to the electronics (which are simple and robust). As you did not change the electronics when changing batteries (the power input) you do not need to conduct a performance check (calibration). Or to put it another way: You do not recalibrate equipment after a power cut or if you remove and replace a mains plug.

Tests on the adsorbed serum (with ZZAP-treated cells) give confidence that the are no underlying alloantibodies to common antigens. However, the use of allogeneic cells risks removal of a cold-reactive alloantibody to a high incidence antigen, e.g. anti-Vel, -PP1pK. A low risk, but still concerning. Does you facility also test the ZZAP-treated patient cells (now presumably DAT-negative) back against the patient's own serum ? This is ultimate proof that the cold-reactive antibody is an AUTOantibody and adds more confidence in the results of the adsorption with allogenic cells. I may b

My personal system was virtually identical to yours except for the the reverse type I used JH-RA and JH-RB. In the facilities where I was the Transfusion Service or Blood Bank supervisor my tube labeling requirement for the staff was that anyone in the department could set down an take over the testing and know who and what was in each tube.

I think it more likely that the donor is expressing an antigen, such as T, Tn, Tk, Cad, etc, possibly as the result of a subclinical infection if this has not been seen before with his/her blood (which would rule out Cad). Have you tried testing it with a lectin panel?

The requirement to perform a donor retype also plays into whether or not the LIS is used for electronic compatibility testing. AABB 5.16.2.4 The system contains logic to alert the user to discrepancies between the donor ABO group and Rh type on the unit label and those determined by blood group confirmatory tests and to ABO incompatibility between the recipient and the donor unit. * *FDA Guidance for Industry: Computer Crossmatch"

Why would the red cells of an individual who is Jk(a-b-) not react with Ulex europeaus?

Reactivity with two of three cells effectively rules out the "antibody to a low incidence antigen" argument. Is the supplier/manufacturer of the Screening Cells the same as the supplier/manufacturer of the panel ? If not, then I suspect formulation differences of the two products may be the answer, specifically pH of testing environment.

My argument would be that blood bank testing is qualitative and not quantitative. We have run into this a little bit in the US as well, they re-organized the federal regulations and starting using chemistry and hematology requirements for blood banking. Our method comparison requirement in particular has never made sense to me. Of course LISS, PEG, solid phase, and gel methods give different results, they are designed to!