Mabel Adams

When our air ambulances give blood, it is wrapped into the charges for their service. I don't believe they charge by line-items. We bill the flight service for any units used. I don't know how it would work with a ground ambulance. We have contracts with the flight services that covers this. If they use the blood we supply to them to fly a patient from a scene to a different hospital, they tell us who the patient is (Name, DOB at least) and we enter them into our BBIS (SafeTrace Tx) even if they have never been registered in our HIS. We have a protocol to assign them a fake MRN to keep STTx happy. This might not work with Meditech because the BB module doesn't have separate patient registration capabilities as I recall. If the patient has a record in our HIS, we use their established MRN but create a visit in STTx. We manage final disposition for all of their units. It is in the contract that any recall will be sent to them for follow-up with recipient. This has never been needed.

Thanks for this. It took me a bit to realize that I could choose 2 shifts by holding the Ctrl key. The wages only allow one value, but I was able to put the wage range in the body of the description so it worked.

We state that they should start the transfusion within 30 minutes, but that is not a "must", just a recommendation of good practice. If they ask us, we will say that the blood should be infused within 4 hours of issue, but they probably use 4 hours of start of infusion sometimes. I think this falls under the practice of medicine, although it might matter what the SOP says you are to do.

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 is a great way to prove that this is the problem rather than a cold antibody etc. Most of our patients who have this, continue to have it for years to come.

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 and then she checked ID against the unit and discovered it was for a different patient (A pos). then she called me fully aware of how close she had come to hanging A blood on an O patient. The OR had a bad habit of not returning units to the blood bank from surgeries at the end of the day and the A pos unit was for a patient who had surgery the prior day. They were the only units in the fridge so she assumed htey were for her patient. The OR desk must not have relayed the message about the delay. There are ways and processes for making remote fridges safer (although TJC recommends against them) but that hospital promptly removed the fridge from OR and we started issuing blood in coolers with the patient ID on them that could be taken to each room. They were much better about returning unused blood and we were aware if a cooler had not been returned so could call for its retrieval.

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 because those with overt disease usually don't live at this elevation. I would love education on the genetics and Hbs percentaage status of these patients if you would care to speculate. We also get HbS negative units in for neonatal exchanges. Is that more necessary here than at sea level?

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 wrong patient to pick up blood and we would issue it. ID would match on ID card and unit. Unit would not scan in Epic on real patient but they could override or give anyway. Hopefully they would check it against the big display screen in OR which has the right patient on it. Also, could issue blood later for other patient (whose label was used) based on wrong blood in tube. Scenario #2: T&S drawn in pre-op or ED is wrong blood in tube. Let’s say BB banding was also improper so band is on patient going to OR. Tube & band have patient going to OR ID on them (but someone else’s blood in tube). ID Card is made up in OR. Timeout is performed. All will match but still wrong blood in tube. Nothing will catch error until ABO-incompatible transfusion reaction. A VTYPE drawn in the room would catch the error. Evidence: Baylor NW transfusion fatality last year. If we could make it so labels couldn't print easily except in right room that would probably move #1 into the acceptable risk realm. If we could tighten up the electronic documentation of collection in scenario #2, that could probably be brought into a reasonable risk realm. One of our problems is the blood bankers being able to tell for certain where the specimen was drawn and whether the patient was scanned to collect it. I think this is mostly learning curve but we would need to make sure that our people could (and would remember to) do it. I greatly appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Please add any unfortunate scenarios I have overlooked.

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.

I tried searching but this is a tricky one to find. What are your policies regarding collection of a 2nd blood type specimen in OR, especially during an emergency or really urgent case? Our OR wants to substitute the "timeout" where they double-check patient ID for a second blood type and I was tasked with finding out what others do. We currently request a repeat type only on non-O patients with no historic type or separate specimen to test. We stick with O blood until we can get the 2nd type. If you allow them to not collect the second type, do you issue type-specific blood once the T&S is done?

Another question on anti-CD-47 drugs. Does anyone know how long the interference persists after the patient goes off of the drug? For DARA it is 6 months but I haven't found it for these drugs.

Enjoy the attached from 20+ years ago. ABOincompatible.pdf

But a perspective that is always needed, I'm sure.

The adsorption/elution showed anti-A but not at immediate spin. It reacted 2-3+ with 3 sources of A1 cells (2 different vendors' reverse cells plus an A1 donor) after 30 minutes at room temperature and was negative with 2 O reagent cells. Last wash was all negative. It doesn't matter, but what subgroup do you think it is? Am?

I guess the only risks to her of giving A red cells would be if our testing is mistaken or the next time she comes in bleeding it isn't really her but someone who is O with a missing reverse antibody that we assume is her. (Definitely chasing unicorns here.) We should be able to convince ourselves it is her as long as the new sample reacts the same as now including with anti-A,B, right? No one is likely to have time to repeat the absorption/elution. I want to leave clear instructions on her record for whatever unlucky generalist has to deal with this someday. Or would we stay with O unless/until we repeated the adsorption/elution on each specimen? BTW, can we debate why they changed "absorption" to "adsorption" 20ish years ago (ad is Latin for "to"; ab is Latin for "from")? It seems like we are usually trying so absorb antibody out of a plasma sample so "ab" makes more sense to me. Here we are trying to adsorb it onto the patient cells. I was using "absorption" because it is opposite of usual, but I had the Latin prefixes backward in my mind. I vote for a patient-sample-centric universe so "absorption" for the usual warm auto workup and "adsorption" for this sort of testing. Or less highfalutin use of language altogether and just use "absorption" because it is a more common word. I'm also interested in input from blood bankers from countries where English isn't the primary language.