Trek Tech

I prefer to give little c neg if the patient is little c antigen negative to keep them from forming the antibody. When there is a little c most of the panel cells are positive and it can be harder to identify new antibodies if your supply of reagent red cells is limited.

Thank you all for your wisdom! The funny thing is...I can't find any validation study here...but, it is not my problem! I look forward to interacting with you all again!

I have a quick question: Is there a limit to how many times a unit of rbc's can be sent via pneumatic tube? I sent a unit to the floor. The nurse called me within 5 minutes and apparently the IV had infiltrated and she couldn't hang the blood. I had her send it back to me as it had not been spiked. The temp was fine and I put it back in the fridge. I could not find any documentation in our procedures about it and looked on the net etc.. My gut feeling was that I would err on the side of caution and when they requested it again the nurse had no problem with coming to the lab to pick it up (we are in a different building than the hospital). Most of my coworkers thought I was crazy (not disputing that) so I wanted to check with you fine folks! Haven't been online in a while and miss all of the talk! Hello to Malcolm Needs! (I am sure he is still about)!

I agree with Jayinsat. We do a selected cell panel with every new specimen. I didn't see anyone mention an autocontrol. We would always run one with each selected cell panel. We never have to ID the antibody again..maybe just check for reactivity in low freq's like Jka. Anything less than that would lead to sleepless nights...

I have seen an occult blood card come in the mail with a large bm smashed in the "apply here" window. I have also received the diary of said bm with a time of day of each specimen, what was eaten, how the movement was performed (strained hard, easy push etc.). In nursing school we learned about the elderly becoming bowel obsessed. My work as a Med Tech has certainly proven that.

Sorry to disappoint you but Medical Technologists are not "allowed" to diagnose. You need an MD for that. My state license is quite strict in that regard. Good luck.

Thank you for that post. When I received that from Ortho I called our Reference lab and they agreed that adding an IS was the best protection against a CAP deficiency. This is not the first deficiency on this that I have heard of...

I have to agree that Red Gold is probably the best. There are websites that I have seen that do a good job for the layman as well. Will try to find them.

Ahhhh! But no more elbow tendonitis from ejecting the ID Tipmaster with the thumb eject that is so very ergonomically wrong...my elbow surgeries and injections from years of the tipmaster use can attest to that fact. "One of the worst cases of tennis elbow on someone that has never played tennis" as my orthopod said.

Look at Ovation's ergonomic pipettes..adjustable volumes. Easy tip eject.. It is worth the cost. Made by the MLA people. A little learning curve but you'll never go back to a "stick" pipette again.

Our Sports and Ortho department purchased their own PRP system. I was kept out of the equation because, hey, I'm a blood banker, what do I know. I have seen it ...there are several systems available. I think they have the Cytomedix Sorry, it scares me.... There was a blurb about it in this months AABB magazine. Should have some oversite as far as I'm concerned. But hey, we blood bankers want to control everything about blood products.

That sounds like a centrifuge calibration issue... Technical Manual has the procedure... quite a dreadful procedure but it will clear up any question you may have with spin time etc..

Yes, yearly calibration always yields 20 seconds all phases....

We have the brake and accelerate at 9 for 20 second spins...No tails at all. However, we don't have the removable centrifuge heads. We brake set at 6 to stop for washing ...any higher and the cells mix while braking.

Our manufacturer said they are approved for all blood products by the FDA...