Shannon

We use Orhto Sickle-dex. Most of the inserts we looked at state that the test must be ran with whole blood. (Can't use segs off of packed rbc's, we called to check!) Also, if your units are leuko-reduced, the segs more than likely contain additives. We are a blood center and ALL of our filtered units have additive in the seg line. We had to validate the use of our segs because they were not whole blood. Good luck! Please post your findings.

When dealing with the hospitals regarding if a "reference call in" (we are a blood center) is an emergency at 2 AM, I've found that most of the hosp. in this area let each Dr. push them into tx. when they (Dr.) feel like it. I've seen pt. tx. 2 units at 9.9 and 30 because the rest home will not keep them there with a low crit. Hard numbers are hard to stick with because each situation is so different. I worked with an elderly tech. during her chemotharapy that would work with a crit. of 18-20. Chronic anemia vs acute anemia? In a level one trauma center there are almost too many situations to have a "set tx. point" After all that blather,,,, we push for 7 and 21 in non-emergency/surgery situations. Again let me state that I personally do not think there is an all inclusive set point that will fit all of your transfusion needs.

We honor warm-autos with specificity only when they are demonstrating. We had a similar problem as Dawn with an Rh neg. patient that had a warm auto anti-e.

Dose mapping annually with RadSure on each product.

Bac-T both parts. Ship after sample. Quar. (recall) both if one is +. Send off site for culture/ID.

We work out of one rack and every vial is tested daily. If we open a new vial in the course of the day (even same lot#) it is also QC'd. We do not use a kit, but use different Ab examples for each new lot. (never the same twice in a row) The first person to use each reagent is responsible for doing it's QC. We are a blood center and do not answer to JCAHO. "Just" FDA.

Sorry to sound dumb.......... but what kind of reagent? ALL of our reagents (We are a Reference lab in a blood center) get tested with pos. and neg. reactions. Everything. We use Hetero. cells when possible for the pos. rxns. Don't know if this helps.

Master set sent to Troemner yearly. All weights used daily are calibrated once a year against master set.

The only difference in strength we have seen is when we convert 3-5% cells to .8%. These show an obvious increase in stsrength. (very helpful with weak Ab's) We also have encountered several fairly strong Ab's in PEG that are negative in Gel.