medtechristy

Just wanting to take a survey to see how everyone does their crossmatches. Do you pull a secondary sample as a recheck for your 2nd blood type and/or do you do immediate spin crossmatch vs. electronic? Thanks in advance for your responses!

Eagle Eye, yes, we were screening for M neg units. The patient had an M that was reacting at Coombs phase. Thank you so much for your response! We are on the east coast in the panhandle in Florida.

I'm working on a project in our blood bank to try to improve both cost and time spent antigen screening for units. When is it more cost effective to order from our supplier vs. screen in house? We spent several hours screening for both Jkb and M (separately) about a month ago, and also spend lots of time screening for multiple antigens. I found out it costs us $21 per antigen for historically negative units from our blood supplier and $51 for antigen typed units from our blood supplier. So I'm in the process of analyzing data and time spent to figure out the best plan / guideline for our transfusion service for screening vs. ordering. I wanted to reach out and find out from other hospitals, what your policies / parameters / strategies are in this situation. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

Does anyone currently have and/or are familiar with Boekel brand "digital dry bath heat block 115V 200W (or 90W)"? We are thinking of getting one and wanted to gather reviews if possible first before we invest the money. We have a Thermo Scientific multi-blok. Thanks in advance for any advice/help you can give us!

We are wanting to order a new blood bank heat block. The one we currently have is not holding temperature well. We are having to constantly adjust it back to normal range. We currently have a Thermo Scientific Multi-blok. Any suggestions for a good replacement that is actually able to hold a temperature? Thanks in advance for the feedback

We have had issues for several weeks with our WB cor QC #2 tube failing QC randomly. It doesn't do it every day, but each time, we see what looks like "trash" in the anti A well of the CMT strip while doing the blood type. (The blood type should be B neg). We have tried spinning the QC for 3 minutes instead of 5, per suggestion of Immucor. We've also tried spinning the QC tubes with the caps off (as was recommended by Immucor when the threads for the tube caps were on the inside of the tubes and little flecks of dried blood were getting in the tube, causing false positive reactions), and reaming the tubes with wooden sticks, and those things seem to help sometimes, but not always. Our affiliate hospital is having the same issues and I was wondering how many more people out there are having these issues as well, and if you are, any suggestions you have woule be appreciated. This issue is very frustrating, as it wastes time, reagent, money, etc. It has occurred with several different lots of QC, reagents. Please help!!!

We currently have an SP Thermo Electron Cryo Fridge brand Freezer and we have had nothing but problems with the alarm. Our weekly alarm checks are failing even after having parts replaced and wired messed with etc. etc. We have been doing manual temperature checks every 4 hours for FAR too long and need suggestions for a reliable replacement freezer. Could anyone share pros/cons about the freezer you currently use? We store 20 O FFP, 20 A FFP, 10 B FFP, 12 AB FFP, and 8 Pooled Cryoprecipiate units in our freezers. We currently have one with 7 drawers. Thanks for any advice/feedback anyone could offer!

ATTENTION ECHO USERS, Over the past couple of years, we have seen the following scenario several times: *Patient with no antibody history is panreactive with screen and Ready ID panel on the Echo. *DAT performed on Echo is negative *LISS screen is negative *Supervisor made the decision to call this an "atypical warm autoantibody" Has anyone else experienced this same issue and how was it addressed/what do you call this? Thanks for any input/feedback that you could provide us

Kate, We are currently having this issue of false negative Echo antibody screens at our hospital and were told the same thing, that bubbles may be causing the sample to not pipette plasma. What was the resolution at your hospital and are you still having this issue?