mary h

Our biggest concern was "ruling in" new antibodies. Of course we would honor an antibody if we could not rule it out, but we were curious as to if we needed to change our antibody ID procedure. Since we are new to automation, we wanted to see what the "pros" :)were doing. I appreciate the responses.

Just curious about what everyone is doing to meet the p-values when performing antibody indentification on the ECHO. In tube, we have always accepted 3 reactive and 3 nonreactive cells to meet p-values. We just started performing antibody ID on the ECHO and the three panels available for automation do not always provide enough cells to get 3 reactive. Some of the antibodies detected on the ECHO were not detected in our tube method using PEG. Any thoughts?

Has anyone validated antigen typing on the ECHO or Galileo? If so, are you willing to share you plan or offer references?

For those of you using the ECHO, how are you documenting the antibody screen controls? Do you record it in your LIS or are you archiving the data on disc? Mediware may be unable to build this into HCLL for us, but archiving all those discs seems excessive just for the documentation of controls. Any thoughts/suggestions are appreciated!

We receive an average of 3400 specimens per month, with a mislabeled rate of 1-2%. We are pushing for barcoded ID bands, but no progress has been made in that direction. Hemolyzed specimens are not a problem, maybe 1 or 2 a month.

We have a lot of wastage. In addition to the crappy reasons, we monitor locations(OR and individual floors), physicians ordering, and cost.

Happy Birthday! No work allowed.

For those of you using platelet coolers, are you doing anything in particular with the gel packs when they come back to ensure they are the proper temp to reuse? Are they put back in a room temp bin for immediate reuse or rotated? I have qualified coolers for platelet storage, but not sure how to address the returned gel packs. Am probably overthinking this... Any suggestions are welcome.

Good Morning! Is anyone performing a periodic computer-down time to comply with AABB Standard 3.9.2? Our facility is going to incorporate a mock computer-down episode into our quarterly QC, but unsure how to document. If any is currently doing and would be willing to share documentation, I would greatly appreciate it!