Galelio-immucore

[amalki]

I plan to introduce Galileo-immucor system for grouping and antibody screeening to our lab.

have no idea about it. Any advice? we run 100 samples/day.

[David Saikin]

Why are you getting it? How can you make that decision with no knowledge of the product? Have you looked at other technologies . . . column agglutiination or the Tango?

[amalki]

Thank you David

We are in the middle east where variety of technology is limited. I have heard about Galileo from neighbour country. would be happy to know your exprience. -I'm still in the stage of planning

thank you again

[David Saikin]

I am certain you have gel and the Tango available - contact Diamed for gel and BioSite/BioRad for the Tango.

[kate murphy]

We have had Galileo for about 5 years. Mostly happy with the system. We run about the same amount of patients (100 or so) and another 100 ABO unit re-types per day.

For any system you implement, make sure you have a technical engineer available in a reasonable time frame, as all instruments need service occasionally. Our Galileo has been very reliable, but there is some down time when a part fails. We are in process of validating Echo right now. It is a smaller bench-top Galileo - less through put, better suited to our Stat lab. Good luck.

[Kimba]

Be prepared for lots of downtime and repair issues. We have had our Galileo for 5 years and it is down 15-20 percent of the time. In the last 3 years it has had the camera replaced twice, centrifuge 3 times X/Y transport 4 times and incubator twice (and that is off of the top of my head). We run 100 plus samples per day plus 150 donor retypes. It took Immucor 4 years to get the software upgraded so that donor retypes would transfer. We never could validate panels on the Galileo.

We did get an Echo and it is a little better, but not much. It is faster than Galileo.

I think we got the Galileo lemon of all times. I would give it a D- and the Echo a C-. If I was the manager, I would not have purchased it. We still do lots of work with MTS and it is our back-up as well as abid system.

[Eagle Eye]

we have two ProVue and I love them!!!

[estiner]

We have the ECHO and it is wonderful!! Very little downtime, faster than ProVue, smaller than the Tango, and very user friendly. We like it much better than manual gel which we used before. Immucor gives great support - much more so than what we got from Ortho.

[tcoyle]

The Galileo is a work horse, but you may want to check out their next generation instrument, Neo. We have three instruments. Two are out in the hospital labs and one in the donor center. We did find a problem during our initial with the instrument not being able to pick up weak antibodies. Visually a technologist could see a sample that was suppose to be positive, but the instrument called it negative. We now visually look at everything to determine if an antibody screen is pos or neg, then follow up any pos with a repeat screen (manually performed) or antibody ID. There were two abstracts written for AABB (2008 and 2010) if interested.

[rosebskt]

Our Blood Bank has had a Galileo about 5 years and the instrument made a huge difference in our work load. Before the Galileo, we used the tube method with Peg enhancement for all our testing. We just recently added the Echo. We do routine testing on the Galileo and Stat testing on the Echo. I take really good care of both instruments and have little downtime.

Edited February 9, 2011 by rosebskt

[Robert Fallis]

We have two Galileo and two ECHO instruments in our lab. We have had really good luck with all four with minimal down time. The Galileo instruments do require extensive maintenance but does pay off. I would recommend the Neo which is a new model recently released. It does have STAT sample capablilites were as the old instruments are batch instrument work horses. We run approximately 300 prenatal ABO/ Rh & antibody screens daily, 200 pretransfusion type and screens, 200 ABO confirmations daily. We use the ECHO instruments for STATs and Antibody ID. They reagents and expendables are expensive but have made up for the cost with reduction in technologist labour hours.

[OxyApos]

We have had an Echo for 2 years and have maybe 10 hours/ year of downtime. It has been a lifesaver for a lab without many experienced Blood Bank techs. It has its quirks but once you know them, it is the tech that never calls in sick. You should make sure about support and reagent availability for your region.

[EDibble]

We have had the Echo for several years with minimal problems. The staff has gotten pretty good at troubleshooting too, so that helps. Good luck!

[amalki]

Thank you all,

it seems that some luck is needed when using Galelio

[OxyApos]

There are 3 instruments that Immucor makes:

Galileo ( for large volume labs )

Echo ( much smaller volume labs)

Neo ( just came out but for more volume than an Echo )

The Echo is what I referred to as very little downtime, easy to use, little maintenance, etc.

Michelle

[Greenman]

Why are you getting it? How can you make that decision with no knowledge of the product? Have you looked at other technologies . . . column agglutiination or the Tango?

Dear David:

It seems like you have not had a good experience using Galileo, Unlike us, we have been using Galileo for more than 5 years and we are very pleased with it's performance. The mean time between breakdown is more than 90 days.We are actually seeking the new version of Galileo (NEO), which I think you will get for your lab (amaliki). In this process we have came to know that many modules (that were source of troubles) for some customers has been modified. Good luck

[FRahman]

We have been using Galileo for over 4 years. We had lots of up and down times. Its a good system but i think it's better if you try to look at different technologies and choose the best at this time as David suggested, because the technology is moving so fast and does not stay at one place.Good luck

[David Saikin]

Hi - I don't have an automated platform . . . my question was purely rhetorical (how/why can you purchase an instrument with no knowledge of it - or any other automated platform).

Dear David:

It seems like you have not had a good experience using Galileo, Unlike us, we have been using Galileo for more than 5 years and we are very pleased with it's performance. The mean time between breakdown is more than 90 days.We are actually seeking the new version of Galileo (NEO), which I think you will get for your lab (amaliki). In this process we have came to know that many modules (that were source of troubles) for some customers has been modified. Good luck

[snydercl]

We have the Echo and are pleased with it. As with every instrument, it has its set-backs. We also use Ortho gel for our backup method.

[RWOOD57]

Has anyone interface Meditech and Echo so that the antibody screen is crossing. It was working great but the testing notes wants the Pos CT to cross over and it is messing up calculations of interpretation. Any help would be appreciated.

[mjshepherd]

I installed and validated our Echo over two years ago and overall the Echo is a good instrument, the mechanical operation is relatively simple with quick and easy maintenance. For facilities with moderate to large volumes of routine testing it does free up a lot of bench time.

The patient data organization is cumbersome for facilities that are not computerized. However, when interfaced with a Blood Bank computer system the Echo will download worklists and upload patient test results fairly seamlessly.

The functionality of the analyzer is also somewhat limited to ABO, RH, Antibody Screen, IgG DAT, and Antibody ID panels. While it is capable of running other functions such as forward typing of donor units and crossmatch testing these are more complicated and time consuming than manual testing.

One of the best cost effective features that I have found is that many of Immucor's tube typing reagents are used on the Echo as well, reducing the number of reagents need to maintain two methods.

We did have some issues with validation. The analyzer will only detect IgG antibodies, which led to us removing the crossmatch option from our testing due to incompatible blood types being reported as compatible. This also prevents the analyzer from detecting cold reactive IgM antibodies, which could be clinically significant in surgical cases where the body temperature would be lowered.

The much increased sensitivity for IgG reactivity can cause problems when starting out as you may notice and increase of positive antibody screens with no identifiable specificity when tested against ID panels. We have found through experience that many of these patients with non-specific reactivity actually develop identifiable antibodies when tested at a later date, leading us to believe that the Echo may be picking up very low titers of certain antibodies.

I would recommend this analyzer for any facility with moderate to high volume of routine testing that could be batched, and had the ability to have an interfaced computer system.

If you have any questions fell free to contact me directly.

[AnneB]

We have the Echo and we love it. You can load specimens while it is running, prioritize stats, and the best part is staff program it and walk away to do other things. We have had some repair issues but to be honest, the instrument is running constantly. We it has been down, staff are not happy because they are so used to having it available. The Echo does the majority of our types and screens for us now. Good Luck!

[AMcCord]

Quote "The analyzer will only detect IgG antibodies, which led to us removing the crossmatch option from our testing due to incompatible blood types being reported as compatible. This also prevents the analyzer from detecting cold reactive IgM antibodies, which could be clinically significant in surgical cases where the body temperature would be lowered.

The much increased sensitivity for IgG reactivity can cause problems when starting out as you may notice and increase of positive antibody screens with no identifiable specificity when tested against ID panels. We have found through experience that many of these patients with non-specific reactivity actually develop identifiable antibodies when tested at a later date, leading us to believe that the Echo may be picking up very low titers of certain antibodies. "

Crossmatching with the Echo is workable for patients where AHG crossmatch is required...just have to remember that the users manual states that it may NOT be used to detect ABO incompatibility of the donor. The solution to that problem is an immediate spin crossmatch by tube in addition to the Echo (or Galileo or Neo) crossmatch. It is not going to help you with all those patients where only an IS crossmatch is required - still need those tubes. If you are a large facility, that can be a lot of manual testing. If you are using gel, manual or Provue, you still have to do the tube IS crossmatch, not just the gel crossmatch. (See previous lengthy discussions on that in other threads.) So either way, you can't get away from the tube IS crossmatch. Hope somebody is working on a solution to that problem - an automated IS crossmatch would be a great addition to the test menu.

Absolutely agree with your statement about the increased sensitivity to IgG reactivity. We've had the same experience with weak non-specific reactions growing up to be real antibodies at a later date.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

Absolutely agree with your statement about the increased sensitivity to IgG reactivity. We've had the same experience with weak non-specific reactions growing up to be real antibodies at a later date.

I am not totally surprised at this, as an IgM anti-D can mimic an anti-I when it is very first produced by the immune system, if you happen to "catch it at the wrong time"!

[AMcCord]

I tell the techs to look VERY closely at what they think is a weak non-specific reacting antibody and not to be too quick about dismissing it as junk. If the reactions look anti-D ish or anti-Jka ish, then that's perhaps what it is!