gel card shipping issues

[bbnewbie]

We seem to have many gel cards that do not read on the provue. We can have up to 40% of what we use a day. What is the best way to keep this number down? Makes a big difference when it takes 20 min to start a load because we keep having to change different cards out. I thought this new packaging was supposed to help this problem

[janet]

Is your problem with the "fill residue"? If it is there's not much you can do in my experience - spinning sometimes helps ....Ortho reimbursed us some $ because of all the trouble we had. We resorted to loading extra cards with each run. Intermittant problem - some lot#'s worse than others!?!

[Likewine99]

We currently don't have this problem but have had it in the past but not at the 40% level Centrifuging the cards seemed to help. If you're not happy with them have Ortho issue credit or send new stock.

The 2 times I have asked to return cards they have always sent a new lot and told me to keep the old lot and use on the bench.

This leads me to believe that other users complained about that lot number. Don't hesitate to complain, we all pay lots of $$$ for their product.

[KKidd]

I have noticed a problem with the level of the liquid in the cards since the packaging was changed. We started ecntrifuging all cards before use. However, I have noticed that with the last two shipments the cards looked okay. I continue to spin the cards befroe use just as a precaution.

[BloodBank]

We have these problems time to time. We also visually inspect. If bubbles, centrifuge them and problem will be resolved. Sometime camera can not read barcode because of some fibers etc. Wiping to remove any particulates help. We also always place few extra cards each run to eliminate reidentification and delay process.

[MEVANS]

We have been having a problem with the cards for about 2 years now. Sometimes centrifuging helps and sometimes not. We have requested several replacement shipments during this time. A specialist did come to our site and agreed that a number of the cards did not meet the requirements in their own guide for visual inspection criteria, later after taking some of our cards to a technical meeting it was concluded that the lighting in our lab is why we we're seeing the gel or liquid above the liquid level and it was fine to use the cards...