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We had a patient that needed 9 vials of Rhophylac. It was given IV. The RNs followed the package insert and gave all nine vials at once. The insert does not address the infusion rate when multiple vials are needed. The patient developed chest pain. She was transferred to acute care and monitored overnight. By the next morning she was fine and went home the next day. It wasn't until after the reaction and we notified the company that they sent us articles suggesting an infusion rate of 1vial every 2 hours. Our suggestion to them was that this should be addressed in the package insert.

We have implemented the 2 hour infusion rate also. Our Medical Director was asking if anyone had done any studies on this so I thought I would ask around. Thanks for taking the time to reply, Ann

Susan, we had a patient that needed multiple vials (9) here and she also had a reaction. We ended up calling the company also. They sent us some articles about infusion rate, etc. Do you know of any studies or other hospitals that did some research on the infusion rate when multiple vials are needed. Thanks, Ann

Has anyone tried the new Biotest Blood Bank Reagents? The pricing appears to be lot less than what we are now using, especially for the special antigen typing antisera. If you have, do you like them? Do they perform as well as Ortho and Gamma/Immucor reagents? Thanks!

Does anyone have a Lookback procedure for T.Cruzi that would like to share? I'd appreciate it! Thanks!

We are establishing our procedure to correlate our gel results with tube results every 6 months as JACHO says we have to do. How have you handled this? How many samples did you use to correlate gel/tube testing? Any ideas anyone has would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

We are a new Level II trauma center. We have a form for the Emergency Release of blood that the physician is required to sign for uncrossmatched blood. This form, however, does not have space to include an area for the taking of vitals at 0, 15, 60 and completion of the transfusion. I'm trying to find out how other hospitals handle the taking of vitals during an emergency situation with uncrossmatched blood. I would appreciate any ideas you might have. Thanks!

The Lot # of reagent red cells and gel cards were the same. The K expression is usually always hetero. We are concerned about the camera drifting off again and this situation could happen again.

Hi everyone, we recently went live with our second Ortho ProVue. We had a patient test negative for the antibody screen on our initial ProVue. It just so happened that a week later that same patient was run on the new ProVue and the screen was weakly positive. An Anti-K was Id'd. The most recent specimen was then run on the older ProVue with a negative result. The initial patient specimen was then run on the new ProVue with a weak positive result. Ortho was called and service was dispatched. The camera was realigned, and other things were checked too. We then ran a very weak specimen on both ProVues with the same weakly positive result. So, for now both ProVues seem to be picking up weak reactions. What we would like to know is if anyone has experienced this same incident. Also, does anyone monitor or QC weak reactions on the ProVue. We use the Alba controls, but they are quite strong. I'm hoping someone out there has some ideas. They would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

We are implementing a new BB Computer System (Wyndgate). An outside agency is tranferring patient data from our old system (Hemocare). Our question is how many patient records need to be validated to check for accuracy? Also, should the patient validation be random, or should it cover examples of special needs, antibodies, etc? I would be grateful for any advice!