Routine use of Anti A,B

[klhanks]

Is there any added value in routinely utilizing the Immuncor Anti A,B reagent?

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

NO!  If the patient turns out to be a weak subgroup of A and/or B, why not give group O anyway.  You might say that this is a waste of group O blood, but I would use the counter-argument, how often is this going to happen, and so how much waste of group O blood is involved?

[MAGNUM]

I agree with Malcolm. The previous BB supervisor loved A,B for all group O patients. One of the first acts I performed after taking over was to get rid of the use of A,B. Not only was it not necessary, but in my opinion it is a waste of money that could be spent elsewhere.

[marvy1]

We routinely use Anti-AB to retype our Group O blood units coming in from our supplier. It is cheaper than using Anti-A and Anti-B for that purpose.

Edited May 31, 2013 by marvy1

[goodchild]

We also get a pack of these every so often and use it for retyping O donor units.

[SMILLER]

Same here.  Only use it to type O units as they come in from our supplier.

 

Scott

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

Yes, I can see why you use it for that.

 

Over here, we don't retype the units in the hospitals.  I was thinking of typing patients only.

[Dansket]

_{See the Polls forum on "Use of an Anti-A,B test result" for more ideas.}

Edited June 1, 2013 by Dansket

[AMcCord]

Same here.  Only use it to type O units as they come in from our supplier.

 

Scott

 

Ditto.

[PAWHITTECAR]

O units only...

[Liz0316]

We only use A,B for retyping donor units on arrival, other than that, no, we don't use for patient typing.

[tupton]

No value for routine patient testing.  Ditched it a couple years ago.

[Dr. Pepper]

The Immucor package insert points out that the reagent may have some use in detecting certain subgroups such as Ax and as confirmation of your results with anti-A and anti-B. The incidence of Ax has been reported as 1 in 40,000, and as Malcolm and Magnum suggest, hardly seems a burning concern. And your reverse grouping should serve well enough to confirm your cell grouping. So we just use it, like others, to confirm group O donor units.

That being said, I'm curious, do any of you reference lab types have any experience in how well the monoclonal anti-A,B does in reacting with Ax cells compared to human-source? The insert says besides clones producing anti-A and anti-B, they include a clone that produces an antibody reacting with both A and B, which all sounds like a nice approximation of human group O serum.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

We don't use monoclonal anti-A,B at all Phil.

We have some (very) old human anti-A,B grouping reagents that we froze down eons ago, and use that for the infrequent samples that we have to test for this reason.