We have had many problems with Ortho, but I don't know if it's with the gel cards or the 0.8% selectogens. We are not automated, by the way. We have been having hazy, junky reactions for our screens of and on for well over a year now, we do the panel and it is negative. It has gotten so bad that a couple of times, the techs would call it "junk" when there was a real antibody there. The most recent problem was bizarre. We would finish a screen, obviously negative, result it, then go to use the rest of the wells on the gel card an hour or two later and the screen you had just resulted as negative was now a 2+,but it looked hemolyzed. It nearly gave a couple of techs a heart attack. It kept happening for several days, then just as mysteriuosly stopped. I called Ortho and they said it was static electricity and we should put a wet paper towel on our work station to prevent this. No conditions had changed in the lab so we didn't do this and the problem went away on it's own. I do not have the lot # of the gel cards because I am writing this at home. I honestly cannot wait until Ortho looses it's patent on the Gell cards in 2011 so we can buy them from other vendors. They don't seem to admit their problems.
