griffsh

Thank you for your response. Did you make varied strengths of C3 coated cells? Which blood bank book did you find a method for making them? I checked the Technical Manual and didn't see the method for making them (but I could have missed it).

Thank you so much for your response! I'm glad to hear this method is working so well for you! I have a few questions if you don't mind answering. 1) We were wondering why you would use a Polyspecific card in addition to the IgG and Buffer card. 2) Could a 0.8% Selectogen be used instead of A2 cells for your Neg QC? 3) Do you run a patient control if all are positive? Do we need to worry about spontaneous agglutination in the buffered gel card? 4) When you validated did you make up your own complement coated cells or did you use the Immucor Complement Control cells. Did you make dilutions to represent different reaction strengths? How many did you run?

I have noticed on the CAP DAT surveys from 2013 that about 12 or so facilities are using buffered gel cards when performing their C3 DAT using anti-C3b/C3d reagent. We are in the process of validating this method and was wondering if anyone out there who is doing this has a validation/ comparison and SOP to share with us. We just want to make sure we are on the right track. We especially want to know what is used for controls. Thank you!

Thank you for your response! My feeling is that 3 things should be verified- that the unit is O POS or O NEG (age/sex dependent), the expiration, and that the blood has a big orange uncrossmatched tag attached to it. The transfusion record accompanies the unit (not attached) and is put aside if they give the unit. In a trauma situation they just do not take the time to check the transfusion record against the unit. The doctor signs it later and then sends it back to the BB. I was trying to find some sort of regulation regarding the verifications required for uncrossmatched blood use other than a physician signature and haven't found anything.

After releasing uncrossmatched O POS or O NEG blood should the transfusionist verify the donor number, ABORH and expiration against the bag tag? Can exceptions be made in emergency situations? When the patient is very critical is it acceptable to only verify that the blood is O POS or O NEG (depending on patient sex/age) and tagged as uncrossmatched?

Stericon has gone out of business and we need to find another vendor for RBC freezing containers. If anyone freezes RBCs what manufacturer/ size / product code of freezing containers do you use? I found that Fenwal has a 2000ml RBC freezing bag (product code 4R2422) and wondered if anyone uses it.