Mabel Adams

The prediluted cells from Ortho contain the antibiotic nitrofurantoin as I recall. I think that contributes to why they are to be kept in the dark as that drug is always dispensed in a brown bottle. Patients make antibodies to the antibiotic and thus react in the prediluted cells. Diluent 2 lacks preservatives because we can't store the suspensions over 24 hours so 3% cells suspended in it don't react with antibodies to the antibiotic because the antibiotic isn't present. In my experience, the antibiotic doesn't seem to wash off of the cells but rather adheres to them. What you are doing

I am so sorry for all of your losses. I hope life gets a bit easier in the coming months and years. You provided much help and support on this site for a long time. We are glad to have you here if you choose to join us.

Does anyone know a source for rubber (or similar) weights for balancing centrifuges used to spin units. I seem to remember round circles of different thickness of rubber from decades ago. Thanks.

Was this the case that was written up once in the CAP survey educational information 15-20 years ago? I've always remembered that it was a B pos patient. Although I think in that story the receiving hospital typed him as B (didn't notice the mixed field or assumed it was O given to a B patient) and kept giving B blood until he expired.

Years ago in a hospital far away we had a blood refrigerator in the OR central core. I received a stat T&X specimen from OR and proceded to complete the work. I got a blood product request from from OR before the workup was complete so I phoned to notify them that I would not send the blood until the crossmatch was done (of course they could have requested uncrossmatched which they didn't). Not much later I got a call from the nurse anesthetist and her voice had terror in it. She said that she had spiked a unit that was in the fridge to hang on the patient (O pos) I was still testing a

To save time in my verification process, I am looking for what settings others use for spinning down a blood unit in a Hettich refrigerated 420R centrifuge. Thanks.

I read an article a few years back that showed that blood really didn't do anything terrible if it got a few degrees outside of our range for a bit. That gave me comfort for dealing with these slight deviations. That said, we once had a nursing unit return a unit of plasma that they found in their meds fridge a month or so after we issued it.

Our lab manager wants to have blood bank share a refrigerated centrifuge with Micro that we use for occasionally spinning down units to remove the adsol before adding plasma for neonatal exchange transfusions. Micro would have their own buckets (with lids) and they would use it to spin down AFB specimens. We have to replace our old one because it won't hold temp anymore. This bothers all of us blood bankers but I can't find a regulation to give her to say we need our own centrifuge. Any advice or leads on a regulation I can quote?

Wow! We are having trouble getting enough applicants to our lab jobs. Half of our Micro department decided to retire this year. Other lab scientists are moving to be closer to family. Pandemic effects maybe?

I want to resurrent this topic to see if anyone would share their biggest challenges in using a blood vending machine. Is it possible to adequately train the users on the Nursing side?

I hope you can clarify some stories I have heard. We live at 3600' elevation with a lovely ski hill that is around 8000' (see my profile photo). We have had people come here to ski and be surprised at having sickle problems (I assume sickle crisis). Does this mean these are all homozygous HbS people who just don't have much trouble at lower elevations? I also heard a story from Sarah Ilstrup(sp) that a group of young black professionals took a ski vacation to her Utah mountains and many of them were surprised by developing sickle symptoms. We have little experience here with sickle disease

Our 2 year old Clay Adams just died and they say the parts are discontinued. What's the verdict on the Druckers a couple of months out?

This seems particularly pertinent now that they are finding so many of these patients have VTE. Their clotting system is already pretty messed up by the disease. They seem to have DIC but with clotting more than bleeding.

John, very good questions. Very difficult to scan patient hospital band and specimen labels per Epic specimen collection protocol in the OR. Here's one worrying scenario: Label printed for wrong patient (printed outside room and brought in, printed to wrong room, left in room from prior case) > T&S collected with wrong ID > Pt in room would have no testing being done and we would do it on the one the label/order is for. Caught (eventually) when they call for blood for different patient? They could send the ID card (proxy for blood bank band under drapes) they made out for

Thanks for the response. Doesn't this negatively impact your O blood supply? We can do it for a while but keeping them on O through a bad MTP in OR would deplete our O red cells and our supplier is often running short (and is hours away), especially at this time of canceled blood drives. It's bad enough for the O patients. It really is a hardship for them to draw patients in OR during a bad case and then when they have to do it twice they are beside themselves. Mistakes occur for sure. But we need to have a correct blood type too.