We don't do an eluate on cords unless it its ordered, which almost never happens. Our docs just "treat" the baby.

We switched to this policy a couple of years ago and had the same results. We get and keep all the cords 10 days. If the mom is group O, Rh negative or has a clinically significant antibody, we routinely do the DAT on the cord. If the mom is Rh negative we also do the ABO/Rh on the cord. At first they would order an elution if an O negative mom had an anti-D probably caused by RhIG and the baby was an A or B positive with a positive DAT. They ordered a few of those elutions and then decided it didn't affect how they treated the baby so they stopped ordering them. They have ordered DATs a few times on cords of jaundiced babies who don't meet our routine criteria. There have been no complaints since we started this policy and the techs really like it. :)

I have seen several auto anti-M's and found some using gel. However, gel didn't pick up the one that was with the anti-Jka we sent to the Reference lab. If we don't find any clinically significant antibodies with an auto anti-M, we just give crossmatch compatible.

While I was off a few days, the techs sent an antibody to our reference lab without really looking at the panel they had performed. When I reviewed our gel panel it was a perfect anti-Jka. The reference lab uses LISS and PEG. They told the techs the patient had an anti-Jka and an auto anti-M. The techs told them to crossmatch and send compatible blood. When I asked the techs why they had them crossmatch and send Jka negative units, they said they thought the auto anti-M would make the crossmatch incompatible. It took 12 hours and a lot of money to get 4 units of Jka negative blood. If the techs had looked at our panel, we would have had crossmatch compatible, Jka negative blood for the patient within 2 hours of completing the panel - and we would have saved a lot of money. If the reference lab had used gel, they would have only seen the anti-Jka and would have completed the work-up faster. We would not have known the patient had an auto anti-M, but that had no significance for our treatment of the patient.

I used to work in an outpatient "reference" lab where we performed up to 300 type and screens a day. We did have a process to check the historical antibody identifications and ABO discrepancies, but I don't know how we would have been able to check the historical types on those patients. In the hospital setting , we do check our hospital records on all Blood Bank samples.

I tried this QC for a while, doing the polyspecific in duplicate, and then decided to drop the polyspecific AHG testing. When we got a positive test we had to wash more cells and repeat with the monospecific reagents anyway.

We had a 4 year old who had been transfused multiple times. The last crossmatch and transfusion was 3 months ago. This day, she was in OR with no type and screen, started bleeding, and they needed blood STAT. When I called to let OR know there would be a delay because the patient now had an antibody, the doctor told me we couldn't have a problem because we didn't have a problem the last time we transfused her.

A second shift tech had a nurse call and ask if she could bring someone with her to bless the blood because the patient wanted it blessed before she got the unit. Since we didn't have a policy for blood blessing, he winged it and had the nurse and man she brought stand in front of some plants we had in a back corner to bless the blood - which was just mumbling a few words over it.

I just received the letter from Immucor regarding Using Buffered Saline with the Fetal Bleed Screening Test. We haven't been using phosphate-buffered saline. Since we use gel, we don't use a lot of saline. What is my best option for obtaining this product when I don't need a large volume? Thanks in advance.