Janet Cass-Baxter

We have been tubing blood in a Pevco Tube system for about 5 years now. We occasionally have a unit get lost in the twilight zone and we usually lose this unit because we can't track it quite fast enough to save it. This is not frequent, and we've never had it happen to an autologous unit. We validated much the same way that John Staley validated. We found that a unit could reside in the tube for about an hour before the temp rose above 10oC. We tube all over the hospital, including two areas that are in different buildings. We tried tubing syringes for neonates, and that usually worked (it worked when we validated), but occasionally the syringes would "explode" in the Ziploc bag. So now we send an aliquot bag and a syringe with filter attached and the nurses draw up the syringe. We have the receiver sign that they have received the blood and tube that receipt back to us. This gives us the official record of who received the tissue, and assures us that the blood has gone to the right place and been noticed within 30 minutes.

We used to record this on a daily QC sheet, but that was so cumbersome. Now we record lot numbers on a log, and record the date they go into service. We log them "out of service" when we start a new lot number. So at any given time we know the inclusive dates that a lot was in use.

What are you currently doing with autologous/therapeutic donors on coumadin? We currently check the INR of any autologous donors on coumadin and accept them if the INR is equal to or less than 3.0. We do not however, do this with our therapeutic donors. Just wondering what the standard of practice is out there.

We make a fair number of random donor platelets and are trying to decide how to test them. We have a BactAlert system available to us, and think this is the way to go. Anyone have a validation plan in place for this? How about dipsticks or glucometers for testing pools of random donors?