donellda

I hope all of our friends and colleagues in Australia are safe from the awful floods that are being reported from there today.

Great job, we got 20 new newsletter subscribers in March.

Hi @Pamo,
There are a few options.
If you subscribe to a proficiency testing program, you can often save what they send you.  WARNING - do not use these samples until after you have received the results if you are a CLIA lab. You can spike your training samples with commercial antisera.  These don't always react as expected / hoped for. In my opinion, the best option is to save a recent prior patient sample that is no longer needed or expired. Commercial samples are also available, such as this from Hemo bioscience.

I just answered this question.

My Score PASS  

The person on the top is very special to me. 
Happy birthday

And here we are after just one week.  Getting very close!

Welcome!

Hi. My name is Jenny and I work at Seattle Children's.  I've been in Transfusion Service for 20+ years and have evolved from a centralized blood bank module to a lab inside the hospital. We primarily use gel and tube technology due to our patient population and sample size. We do some reference work (DAT batteries, ABID, Elutions, DTT treatment) and we perform a lot of secondary processing on RBCs and platelets (dividing, plasma reduction, reconstituting, plasma pooling, washing). I love reading about how other institutions approach procedures and problems.  
 

Hi, I haven't been on this forum since I retired about 10 years ago.My 40+ years took me from bench tech in hematology and Blood Bank to supervisory positions in both to just Blood Bank. The last13 years were in Florida, retired and came back up north to Maine. Got my EMR license and work with our small volunteer fire dept. The lab background was extremely helpful in the EMR classes. Also helpful because I know how to write policies and QA isn't a foreign language to me.

And hopefully, a slow day in the blood bank if you are working!

To all those members around the world you celebrate it, Merry Christmas.

To those who do not, have a wonderful day too.

If the reactivity is only in the IS phase, and all other IgG phases are clear, you should do the things to resolve IS interference. If you can identify or think there is a cold antibody, then prewarm would be your answer. You can also wash the donor cell suspension to ensure there isn't something funny with the patient's plasma and the unit anticoagulant or solution. 

Running a 10%  bleach solution through the system is part of manufacturer's suggested maintenance. We do this weekly (high volume testing lab). The carrier should have hot water run through from the top for a few minutes to remove encrusted salts. You can use a pipe cleaner for any outlet that is still appears blocked.  After running bleach through the system (let sit for 10 minutes), run 4 cycle wash with distilled water, and follow with a 4 cycle wash with saline to ensure no bleach solution remains.

My Fitbit Blaze arrived today. Now to figure it out. Thank you again!

Thank you 

I just answered this question.

My Score PASS  

Ha ha! Good thing I retired then

Ha ha! Good thing I retired then

Ha ha! Good thing I retired then

Do you have a company come in to service them? If so, they might be able to help you.  It's possible that the company was bought out by a bigger one like Fisher Scientific. I am retired so I don't have contacts anymore.

I'm not being critical, but I don't think I understand the rationale.  You have poor compliance now with a fridge designed to provide compliance, but of course, a clever person can always find a workaround.  You are proposing to replace it with a regular fridge that will offer close to zero protection for the units.
I understand the maintenance costs for the Hemonetics are likely high. Are you being forced to remove it?

I would most strongly advise you to send a sample, possibly even multiple samples throughout the pregnancy, to a Reference Laboratory.

As the patient is pregnant, there is the possibility that the Jk(a) antigen you are detecting is actually being expressed on the red cells of the foetus, and you are detecting it as a result of a foeto-maternal haemorrhage.  However, the Jk(a) antigen is not necessarily straight forward, as there are weakened forms of the antigen (and the Jk(b) antigen come to that) where there are amino acid substitutions remote from the site usually associated with the Jk(a) and Jk(b) antigens (280 of the mature protein).
In addition though, you have, obviously, to consider the health of the unborn baby who, even if the antibody does turn out to be a maternal auto-anti-Jka, may cause haemolytic disease of the foetus and newborn, albeit this will usually be be very mild.
I attach a PowerPoint which may, or may not help you in your decision to send a sample to your local Reference Laboratory (also tell them the ethnicity of the patient).
 
Interesting case - please keep us informed.
In Depth Lecture on The Kidd Blood Group System.pptx

Welcome!

Thanks, I've read a lot of your posts! Not all 3057, but appreciate the welcome  :-)
I've been in blood banking since 1995. Did a short stint in HPC for 8 years in NJ, but returned to my favorite department when moving back to TX.  I like the range of questions and experience levels on this forum, think it makes everyone feel like there's something useful here. Got a recent promotion so I suspect I will be paying more attention to the regulatory threads     
 

Yes, we use a tag attacher gun to label the units with the crossmatch slip. There is sufficient plastic at the top of the bag to pierce for the tag even if there is not a hole. I think we are more concerned with the MLS poking his/her finger!