generalist

one can only hope this policy will not come back to bite us .as we are a small lab most problem pt's will go to our reference lab, so we will probably end up doing only simple id 's but i bet we have a lot of this with unable to rule out E .

no qc is done on expired paanels, we dont have an sop for expired panels only a blurb at the end of our rule out sop that states to use them for aditional rule outs but not to be used only.

redcross was the first people i called (our reference lab) they were in disagreement with it and were the ones that told us as we had ruled out E this time we didnt need to give antigen neg units to the pt, Our manager has called a friend who is?was a BB supervisor at a different hospital and was told that they had this policy in place, so now we are going with it also.

thanks for all your info ,but apparently we are going ahead with this policy "if you cant rule it out", a restriction will be put in the pt's file to always receive antigen negitive units to any and all antibodies that were unable to be ruled out. not sure of the reasoning behind this , but a sop is a sop. once again thanks for all your input

i found reference(AABB) to if you cant rule it out it was advisable to give antigen negative units, but nothing that states, anything about future rule outs.

does anyone have in place a policy that is for or against this?or a reference in AABB ???

now i am trying to convince the techs i work with not to make this "unable to rule out" a give neg units for life.policy, any thoughts . we are a very small lab and all generalist's very conservative when it comes to bloodbank- like to "see" in black and white ( once it is written so shall it be!)

YesYes Yes,

thanks laraT23, do you have a policy in place that states that or is it just something that everyone knows , as i thought i knew, hahaha

sorry maybe i was unclear , we did send it to arc they said it was a cold m (only that was it) 1mth later pt came back, i guess at this time the tech figures it would be easier to calll for m- and E- units rather than pkg pt up and sending to arc.i know that if you cant rule it out you would give antigen neg unitsat that time but next time is suppose to be a new time right?! i guess my main questions is does any else have this policy about once unable to rule it out , it goes in the pts file for life, i guess to me it feels like we are actually giving them a history of the antibody . i feel this is not a good policy (not to mention time and $) and was wondering if there was any reference i could pull to prove this ?

hi again, ii know E is clinically significant, but as the pt was never id big E only unable to rule out , so do you now always give neg units even though it has now been ruled out? this was a for instance as i guess we are going to mark all pts with give neg units for life for an unable to rule out. even if we rule it out at a later date and it was never id as an antibody.

hi, im new here and hope someone can help me , recently we had a person with acold m (done by arc) they suggested m neg units, next time pt came back we id the m but was unable to rule out E as we didnt have enough panels. So heres the prob, we have no bb sup. but one tech said we now have to always give this pt E neg units and put it in the pts. history, i have never heard of this and when i talked to the redcross they also said no it is unable to be ruled out as that time.This came to light as the pt came back and we had a total neg screen and panel so we gave the pt mneg units but not E neg and was told that was wrong that once you couldnt rule it out you must always give neg units to the anitibody. we have no sop that says this and i couldnt find a reference in AABB standard. wondering what everyones take on this was.