Hello all!

We use Meditech C/S version 5.54 and I'm wondering if there is any way to restrict patient products based on their MRI marker? We attach a marker to patients needing special units (i.e. Irradiated or Sickle neg) and we always visually check that history prior to performing patient testing. And currently, if a patient has an antibody and we <F3> (to perform a unit search) only products that are negative for the corresponding antigen are allowed to be selected for XM.

Is there any way to make this work for Irradiated or Sickle negative requirements too?

Thanks!

Heather

Any response from you Meditech users???

We did try to accomplish this in Meditech and in our current version (5.54) it is not possible. Meditech will search only for ABO compatible and appropriately antigen screened units but does not include the markers in this search. Meditech will not allow an ABO incompatible unit to be crossmatched and will give a warning box to disallow units that have not been appropriately antigen screened. We were unable to activate warning boxes for the markers. We will soon be updating to 5.64. I'm not sure if that will be different in this regard or not.

Meditech has been a mixed bag. We've been wanting to move to electronic barriers for transfusion purposes which our current version of Meditech does not support. Our institution is looking at changing to a completely different vendor system wide. I'm not looking forward to the logistics of getting through that project! It may be worth it in the long run though.

You could use an assignment rule to have a message appear if the marker on the patient does not match the marker on the unit.

See Knowledge Base artical 5999.

:fingerscrI am not familiar with Meditech. But we had a similiar situation with an early version of another LIS. We "created" the antibodies anti-irr and anti-cmv and the antigens irr and cmv and it worked. I don't know if it will work for you.

I agree with David that an assigment rule should work. We have Meditech Magic and we have a rule that covers this.

Linda Frederick

:fingerscrI am not familiar with Meditech. But we had a similiar situation with an early version of another LIS. We "created" the antibodies anti-irr and anti-cmv and the antigens irr and cmv and it worked. I don't know if it will work for you.

Mary -

That's a clever idea. I like the fact that those two codes would be totally obvious to the BB staff techs about the patients' special needs. Also, if your computer system differentiates between demanding that the patient receive "mandatory antigen-negative donor blood" and "optional antigen-negative donor blood" , it would probably be a good idea to make those codes "optional" (in case you are forced to issue regular donor units in situations where the patient can't wait for irradiated or CMV Neg products. Anyway, good idea, Mary.