Monique

Do you require a MD signature on non electronic blood bank orders or is a name satisfactory?

Thank you for making my day

We receive cord samples on every baby and only test the ones (ABO/Rh DAT) from Rh negative moms or those with a clinically significant antibody. Our LIS allows us to see both mom and baby demographics at sample log-in. We never perform an eluate from the cord.

How about cis AB?

When building psoralen-treated platelets into your computer product code database, what special feature will you be creating to capture the fact that these "illuminated" platelets are equivalent to "irradiated" platelets?

We are suddenly detecting anti-Bga using Capture solid phase technique. What gives? Is anyone else picking up these nuisance antibodies in Capture (they are not reproducible in PEG/IgG)?

How about a nationwide survey gathering information on how hospitals prepare aliquots for neonatal transfusion. Do they have an anticoagulant preference? Do they use a dedicated unit or select only fresh blood? Do they issue the unit in a syringe or in a pedi-bag? Are the units CMV negative or leukoreduced? Practice seems to so varied that it would be nice to get an overview and perhaps best practice ideas.

If you're in a hole, stop digging

It well documented and if you take a look at Issitt's Blue Bible "Applied Blood Group Serology" you see numerous citations where certain serums contain loads of antibodies to low freqs--the Blo serum contained antibodies to Bpa, Gf, Jna, Moa, Or, Pta, Ria, Swa, Tra, Vga, Vw, Wra, BOW ans Skjelbred--a real hodge podge of goodies

here's a link to the California Blood Bank Society where they addressed this topic http://www.cbbsweb.org/enf/2004/ffp_lowtiter_anti_t.html

We only perform a FMH test(Rh positive infants, negative Mom) postpartum. The Gamma/Immucor kit insert does not recommend testing infant's possessing a weak D antigen sine the test may not detect a FMH exceeding 30 ml. We send all other requests to the Heme Lab for a KB

With a very busy liver program and active emergency room, we find it very helpful to have prepooled cryo on hand-especially for our overnight crew-pooling a cryo while you're crossmatching, thawing plasma, tagging a platelet, (maybe preparing factor 7a) packing coolers and answering the phone is always fun. I can forward you our SOP. FDA did review our validation documents and gave us their blessing to proceed-we routinely keep 15 frozen pools on hand at all times.

here's an excellent review of what they do internationally Vox Sang(2004)87,210-222-International Forum-Red Cell Transfusions and blood groups

I'd appreciate any feedback on techniques for washing platelets on the COBE-what solution do you wash with? have you ever added Calcium to the final product to adjust the pH?do they look awful!

In the "ask the FDA" regulatory update recently issued there was a question concerning the need to perform monthly calibration of electronic thermometers used in computerized temperature monitoring systems. FDA responded in the "yea" but would consider alternative procedures if the manufacturer's recommendations are less restrictive. What do you do? We let the manufacturer calibrate the temperature probes annually and that's that! It's impossible to get to the probes on a more routine basis without breaking them.