Baby Banker

We have dedicated staff. There were too many errors otherwise.

We still use AB, but we are pediatric only, and we often don't know how big the patient is at the beginning of an MTP. Our thinking is that the smaller a patient is the easier it would be to give them too much anti-B, or at least enough anti-B to potentially cause problems.

How many units of O were given?

I have seen one case where a patient made an anti-Kell after being transfused with platelets only. It was a unit of apheresis platelets, which are usually 'clean.' That doesn't sound like the case here, but I'll throw it out there.

Yes, this does need to be reported. There are specific time intervals for reporting, I believe.

I checked and we do not have a procedure for the LUI Freeze-Thaw technique any longer.

IM injections of a viscous material are traumatic. This made IV Rh Immune Globulin IM injections less desirable for a thrombocytopenic Rh negative female being given Rh positive platelets.

I was going to suggest that you check with the manufacturer. If you haven't already, look at the package insert.

I wish we could afford BloodTrack.

FDA inspectors have told me that they have jurisdiction over all transfusion services. They just choose to restrict themselves to sites that perform certain modifications (e.g. washing and/or irradiating).

We do this as well. Instead of going to 24 hour plasma at the time of thaw, and then to five day plasma the next day, we go directly to five day plasma at the time of thaw. Any time you relabel a unit is an opportunity to mislabel a unit (product code and expiration date especially), and eventually someone will do that.

The Lui Freeze Thaw method is good for demonstrating anti-A, anti-B, and anti-A,B from small samples. We used it to confirm that an infant had ABO HDN. I'm not sure if we still have a procedure for it. I work primarily with the Blood Bank Computer system now.

It has been eons since I did one of these, but I don't remember using albumin. I looked at a couple of procedures online, and it was not listed as a reagent.

I've been active in blood banking for a while, and I've seen just a few of these. Most of the ones I have seen involved two units being swapped. The first one I remember was an AB unit that was labelled as an O. The unit had come in as part of a shipment for our neonatal stock; when we retyped it, we found that it was actually an AB.

And it is a whole lot easier to say. By the way, the U stands for Underwood; this is the name of one of the early patients identified with a partial D.