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...

I just checked our new pumps and they say they are for blood and blood products. I am checking with their technical department though. Thank you David.

I am curious about how different facilities transfuse platelets. I have a pathologist saying platelets should never be given through an IV infusion pump; they should only be given by gravity. This makes some sense as who knows how much shear force it takes to activate platelets. I searched for a thread with this topic and couldn't find one. What are your practices?

I was taught that whenever you enter a bag with a spike it is only good for 24 hours. Having 2 clips on the tubing does not negate entering a bag does it?

We used this reagent and much to our dismay we found that when some of the the patients we called Rh neg went to the hospital to deliver they were typed as Rh positive 4+ in tube and in gel. We had the hospital send us the samples and they were repeatedly negative with Biotest anti-D blend on immediate spin. They all came up as weak D positive with Biotest but we do not do weak D testing. Consequently, we changed to Quotient Anti-D alpha and we have not had anymore discrepancies. We had so many upset patients and physicians thinking we had mis-typed the samples that our credibility came under suspicion until I could explain it to the docs (don't think they understood anyway).

I have 2 and I don't like them at all. They are not blood bank centrifuges in my opinion. The heads don't come out. However, they are quiet and are highly programmable. You have to set the brake speed to around setting 6 or the cells get mixed up when washing.

We use Typenex barcoded bands and love them. No more clerical errors for a tech entering the letters and numbers wrong into the system. We had a BPD when we first opened. The band was something like AAF779 but was entered AFA779. The blood made it to the floor and the nurse caught it! Yes, I know...there are some very good ones out there. ..I investigated and the found the typenex armbands with barcodes and that was my solution for the FDA.

I found some great training on the AABB website in the Commendable Practices area...

Actually there is a new company doing just this in the USA. It is NPAR (National Patient Antibody Registry?) Look for it online. I saw them at AABB last year. There is a fee for being part of it that is too costly for my small facility. I have always dreamed of this becoming a reality but whether facilities will pay to participate is another thing altogether.

The unit was 4+ incompatible at 37 and at IgG. However, none of the panels reacted at RT, 37 or IgG. And as far as my reference lab goes, they are absolutely the best! I believe that their response of giving another unit was appropriate. Had I picked up reactivity in the panel I would have insisted on sending it to them. Well, I guess I got many different opinions which is what I asked for! Many thanks to all of my colleagues around the world!

I should have said that I did perform a tube panel. Immediate spin and Room Temp was negative with two different panels. Everything was positive at 4 degrees. My reference lab said that there was no reason to send it to them to work it up as it was their opinion was that it was a low freq.