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Therapeutic Phlebotomy Scale Maintenance


CHughes

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Hi All!

I was hoping to get some perspective into how other hospitals maintain their scales used in therapeutic phlebotomy. How often do you perform QC? What size wieghts do you use for QC? What's the acceptable range for patient blood bags (if the MD requests 500 cc phleb, what is your acceptable range < and > 500 cc) and QC? Is there any other QC or maintenance being performed on your scales? Our BB is not AABB accreditted (we are CAP) but I try to abide by their standards still. Any info on this topic would be greatly appreciated!!

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  • 8 months later...

We have a set of certified weights that we use every day to perform QC on our digital scale.  It's part of our daily QC.  We use 3 different mass weights:  100g, 200g, and 500g.  Some of our therapeutics are for only 250cc to be removed.  We sometimes prepare aliquots in bags for pedi patients, thus the 100g weight.  We don't have an acceptable range for therapeutics; I should probably add that!  I would think plus and minus 25cc would be acceptable.  Our manufacturer's guide that came with our scale has a procedure for an annual calibration using the 1000g mass weight.  We perform this annually and document.  It's very simple to maintain.  

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I use a container of known mass (actually a giant bolt I got from facilities).  It has a mass of 468 grams.  Every January I weigh it 20 times and document the weights.  The FDA has no problem with this (I was licensed and used it for donors, now am only registered and still use it for donors but mostly therapeutics).  I use it on the postal scale that I use to weigh the first unit drawn each day of use.  I have an old Fenwal trip scale that I use for drawing and weigh the first unit on the postal scale.

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I am using Macopharma therapeutic phlebotomy bags.  They have calibrated volume markings on the bag so a scale is not required.   I have validated the bags and found the markings to be accurate to +/- 5% of volume collected.  

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  • 4 years later...
On 10/16/2013 at 6:32 PM, R1R2 said:

I am using Macopharma therapeutic phlebotomy bags.  They have calibrated volume markings on the bag so a scale is not required.   I have validated the bags and found the markings to be accurate to +/- 5% of volume collected.  

Can you give a description of your validation process? I'd like to do away with the #%$^& Ohaus hanging scale we use. I just got some macopharma bags in to get up and running. Thanks.

Edited by Darren
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  • 11 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I used the macopharma bags occasionally.  I always weighed them.  The demarcation volumes are nice.  You'd have to fill the bags to a line and then get the actual weight/volume and compare that to the demarcation.  Plus, what you fill them with should have an equivalent weight to whole blood.

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