Rosemary

Thanks for the feedback David & SRice.

Hi All We are updating our LIMS and have had a demo from McKesson of their Horizon Lab product. As they don't have an Australian presence does anyone out there have experience with their product to give me some feedback re- the blood banking module? - good & bad points, experience with the implementation,analyser interfacing, post go-live vendor support. Thanks

Loved the bubbling dry ice - I think we did it one time too many times creating a crack in the sink:redface: And we also used to have "saline fights"- my best was once crawling under the bench and squirting warm saline onto a collegues sock to see how long it took for him to reqister. I used to keep a small umbrella close by for protection. Ahhh the good old days when you could work hard AND play hard

This has happened on 2 separate occasions: doctors completing transfusion request forms and specimen labelling for patients, but putting their OWN names DOB's etc

Great explaination Malcolm. Have always shied away from adsorptions, sending them to the referance lab, but will give it a go with our next auto patient. Could you tell me what voulmes and concentrations of red cells and plasma you use when performing the adsorption? Thanks

We've used the AutoVue since 2004, and the upgraded Innova since 2006. In Australia, the casstte columns use glass beads, not gel As we went straight from tube to automation with the AutoVue, can only comment from this perspective- Advantages: *standardised test reporting *cassette images stored and viewable on PC - Windows based *very easy to use - training time minimal *reaction from interference cold aggs, rouleaux almost eliminated *increased safety to user-no glassware, sytem fully enclosed *load and walk away - free up staff to do other tasks *software package - Resolvigen- for antibody ID with education / info re ID'd antibody *can interface to LIS Disadvantages : *Group interpretaion of AB patients recently transfused with multipe grp A red cells is poor - fwd group can appear as B: reaction flagged as forward & reverse typing mis-match - all these we resolve in tube. All our group mis-matched stem cell tx patients are grouped in tube & not on AV. *Stat samples not truly handled as stat - AV schedules samples in batches i.e stat sample not immediately addressed once on board *Large fluidic resevoirs not housed - stored under intrument with multiple tubing threaded through the outside of the intrument; messy looking Hope this is useful

Depending on supply, we would try to give Rh negative

As we do stem cell transplants here, we grade our mixed fields to get an indication of engratment for our ABO mis-matches. These groups are performed in tube.

Thank you aakupatku

We have room temp reacting antisera for Rh, K and Kidd. So if they've not been recently transfusied, we type and transfuse the patients their own phenotypes. We send off our autoabsorptions to a reference Lab. Can anyone recommend a simple autoabsorption method or kit for us to perform in our own lab?

We have been dealing with cardiac surgery cases for more than 20 years. This includes cardiac and lung transplants. Only in the very early days did we screen at a lower temp. but this was 15 -20'C (not 5'C). About 5 years ago, we did received a couple of requests for cold aggs on patients undergoing cardiac surgery who had chronic Hep C. Apparently there is an assocation between chronic Hep C and cryoglobulins. So they were ordering Cold Aggs instead of testing for the presence of Cryoglobulins. If we do find Cold Aggs in our routine testing (which is not often), the anaesthetist is made aware and alerts to use a blood warmer accompany any issued packed cells.

Like David, too much work to validate if switching to cards. Tubes still work well...

Hi all My name is Rosemary & I'm in charge of the Blood Bank in a meduim (~300 bed) size teaching hospital on the fringe of the Sydney CBD. The hospital specialises in stem cell transplants & cardicac/lung transplants. We also have a busy Emergency department. We process about 50-60 type and screen specimens a day & XM around 900 packed cells a month. Our group & antibody screens are routinely performed on the automated AutoVue analyser. I really enjoy visting this site to hear the opinions of other workers in the BB from fields a far. I find it a great source of information seeing many of the topics/problems are ones we also have to deal with. In Australia we have Guidelines rather than Standards for accreditation in good laboratory practices. Most of these are based on the AABB standards. And being an AABB member, I have the Technical Manual as the primary part of our BB Lab reference library. Looking forward to more "education" on the BBTalk forum