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fgrano

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About fgrano

  • Birthday 11/02/1953

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  1. Don’t expect much. I supervise a transfusion service in western New York. While in effort to complete monthly maintenance / decontamination I simply removed the cover of the machine to clean / check. All seemed well, but got a Board 3 error upon attempting to initiate. In short, no manner of probe manipulation / replacement or reboot could get past the error. I contacted service who could not amend, and was told someone would call shortly. An hour and a half later someone did who could not amend and promised a service tech would be in contact shortly. This was 11am in the morning. No call was received by time I left Friday, and the machine remains down most likely for me to initiate action on Monday. The company would seem to need to be more sensitive to the fact they market an instrument which involves patient care…I’m not asking them to repair my DVR.
  2. I supervise transfusion services at a suburban hospital which recently implemented automated techniques for routine testing. As such, we too have had to develop protocol to comply with recent JCAHO mandates regarding method correlation. I would like to draw your attention to some very convincing arguments which are presented by Suzanne H. Butch, MA, MT (ASCP) SBB in the 2009 Summer addition of the Michigan Association of Blood Banks newsletter “In a Different Vein.” The article is titled Method Correlation or Madness? The issue can be reached with the following link: http://www.mabb.org/pdf/2009/IADVSummer09.pdf see pg’s 9-10 If you feel as I do that this mandate is beyond reason and should be rescinded I ask you to support her by writing as she suggests to the following regulator at the Center for Laboratories US Dept. of Health & Human Services Commission. Judith.yost@cms.hhs.gov As technologists we all realize the need for regulation in the advance of patient safety. We all should act when that regulation is superfluous to this end. Push Back!
  3. Indeed, we remain in favor of our choice or this analyzer, and have of late had less such non-specific troubles. Recently, however, we had both the centrifuge and camera replaced and the machine has been functioning better than when first installed. The service rep reported that they have replaced many camera's, and that most such difficulties seem centered on this component - as would be expected. We have also learned that the centrifuge utilizes different RPM's for different functions, and that inefficiency here may well show first in the Anti-B well - likely owing to titer / avidity of the reagent. Of course these are our opinions, based upon a growing experience with the instrument. Technical support was most helpful in working through the difficulties. I too know nothing of the TANGO but hope to learn some day. HooRahhh
  4. We too have found ECHO to be particularly adept at identification with regard to "kidd." Though this is a minor part of our continued "non-specific" ECHO dilemma. More often than not, when tube is negative, ECHO's panel is unrevealing.
  5. I still say this happens all too often, and that Immucor should aggressively be in effort to reduce the incidence. I continue to believe it will eventually become a marketing issue for them.
  6. Your description of patient behavior on ECHO here is strikingly similar to a number of cases we have had, though I could not pin it to an age / sex bias. Indeed, we have surmised the possibility of particular Lot’s though. To tell you the truth, in the end I simply will not put the effort in to pursuit of this – be it Bg, or whatever. My opinion remains that Immucor has a small problem to deal with along the lines of non-specific results, and field experience with this machine will drive resolution. I’ve quite frankly begun to wonder if one could put five male patients with no history of transfusion on ECHO, run panels on each, and come away without some kind of non-specific hit on at least one of them in the 2+ to 3+ range!
  7. Time will tell I suppose? I have mentioned this level of sporadic results to Immucor a number of times. I imagine / hope that if all users are experiencing same it will get back to them and foster aggressive measures to address it. At this point I still favor our choice of ECHO / Capture, but would like to see the company be more sensitive to such concerns. Impression of the operator in the field will affect marketability in the end.
  8. We are a system of four hospitals which have been live with ECHO for about 6 months. Each of our facilities has experienced this type of activity at a rate in excess of what we would like. Typically these cases test negative with standard tube procedures. While we check things out thoroughly, typically we end up defaulting to tried and true methods and moving forward without difficulty. While it is unnerving to say the least, I feel this is inherent in Capture and that recent changes in the operating software will not alleviate the situation. One tends to feel you are backing away from a more sensitive method, but if that method fails to yield a clear result should it drive unnecessary testing and effort? In general such cases have not resulted in any specificity upon further admissions, and tend to be attempted on ECHO occasionally to see if there is any change – if not, being taken directly to the bench.
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