Sickle Cell testing of donor units

[Ann Viernes]

For those of you who do your own pretransfusion testing of donor units, what sickle cell testing reagent do you use and for which anticoagulated red cells? We are using Sickle Heme from MichClone Associates, INC and the mfr product insert specifies for use with samples stored up to 6 weeks at 1-8 C. The product insert also specifies suitable anticoagulants as heparin, EDTA, oxalate, ACD, CPD, CPDA-1, and CP2D. No mention of red cells in additive solutions such as AS-5. This poses a problem since we do a number of red cell exchanges for sicklers and need to provide sickle neg blood. Any thoughts?

[David Saikin]

I assume you are doing testing on the segments from the unit. Usually (I think) the segment is made prior to the additive solution being added, so the segment is probably just CPD blood. If your segments are made after the additive is added, you would have to consult with the kit manufacturer, or, more exciting - YOU would have to validate that it works on such a specimen.

[kate murphy]

We aer using Pacific Hemostasis SickleScreen kit - a Fisher Diagnostic product. It too has the same restrictions for anticoag, but as David says, the segs are not in additives. We also do a lot of exchanges for sicklers.

[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.