Everything Saline!

[BBfuntimes]

I am curious what everyone does for saline documentation, controls, pH testing, labeling, etc.  How often do you change the saline in your bottle, how often do you clean bottle, what do you use to clean bottles, how do you document what you are doing?  Thanks for your input!

[David Saikin]

I change lot #s monthly. I only rinse the squeeze bottle (with the new lot#). Otherwise, I do nothing with my BB saline. I figure if it is contaminated I will get bizarre results. I only use it to make a saline suspension for immediate spin xms and for the pt suspension when testing for FMH.

We did do a colony count after 30d just to see what it was (>100,000)

[DebbieL]

Our saline cube states that it is good for one month after opening. We write on the cube with a sharpie the open and expiration date. When we open a new saline cube we discard the saline in all the squirt bottles and refill with the new lot number. We do have stickers on the bottles that we are supposed to write the lot number but we are not always good. It is something I check when it gets closer to inspection time.  

[AMcCord]

I do document the lot # and OD of the saline in use on the daily reagent QC logs. We check that the appearance is normal and everything works for each reagent after we finish doing tube QC - this works well because the cube we fill the bottles from is the same cube that runs the cell washer....the cell washer is washing the QC, so therefore we've done QC with the saline. The Echo says TA DAH! your QC worked and refuses to do patient tests if QC fails, so that covers the automated saline QC. I don't see any reason to be more complicated than that. Although, if we were inspected by TJC, that probably wouldn't pass. We'd probably have to label each squirt bottle with the lot # and refill daily from what has been said in other threads.

 

We go through about 2 cubes a month for tube testing and 3 cubes a month for the Echo. The squirt bottles get refilled almost daily simply because we go through what's in them. We do check the pH on the Echo saline after we add the pHix buffer and that is documented on the Echo daily QC/maintenance log - one time, one time only per cube.

[tbostock]

We use our saline cubes for one month: we write the date opened and the "opened" expiration date on the cube.  We change our saline in our bottles daily, and clean them weekly with isopropyl alcohol, rinsing profusely with saline before refilling. Keeps the cooties at bay.

 

Our bottles are all labeled "saline changed daily" and we have daily and weekly checklists where the tech documents that it was performed.

[amym1586]

We normally have 2 cubes open at a time. with 2 different lot numbers.   One is hooked up to our cell washer and one is opened to fill our squirt bottles.

 

How do you handle qc for that?

Currently we are just writing down the QC for the cube lot# going to the cell washer.

Do I need to update my qc to include the saline going into the squirt bottles?

[Dansket]

Automated testing eliminates all these issues.

[AMcCord]

On 12/25/2015 at 7:40 AM, amym1586 said:

We normally have 2 cubes open at a time. with 2 different lot numbers.   One is hooked up to our cell washer and one is opened to fill our squirt bottles.

 

How do you handle qc for that?

Currently we are just writing down the QC for the cube lot# going to the cell washer.

Do I need to update my qc to include the saline going into the squirt bottles?

Yes, you should. For the squirt bottles you could easily use a screen cell plus your QC antibody pos antisera and a screen cell plus inert plasma through AHG phase, do a manual wash... bazinga! you have a positive and negative control.

OR....... We fill our squirt bottles from the same box that is attached to the cell washer and avoid that problem. It's not hard to slip the tubing from the cell washer off of the saline cube spigot. (You just have to remember to turn the spigot back on after the tubing is replaced .

)

Edited December 26, 2015 by AMcCord

[Mabel Adams]

Cell washers usually have either a prime cycle or a cycle for measuring the saline output.  We fill our squirt bottles from the cube on the cell washer using the latter function.  We use the cell washer to run out tube testing QC. Our squirt bottles are pretty small so we go through the contents pretty quickly.  We will be automating in 2016 so I need to remember we will use them more slowly so probably need to institute a "rinse, fill, repeat" plan on a defined basis.

[Eagle Eye]

same here. to make it less complicated we have only one cube open. (for cell washer and bottles). It is not big deal to fill bottles from same cube. If you have two cubes open, need to QC both.

[DPruden]

Everyone should check their saline cubes for a requirement to do a visual inspection on a daily basis after opening the cube.  that came as quite a surprise to me and not all saline brands have it on the cube!

[Eagle Eye]

We fill our bottles from saline cube daily.....our QC form we document visual check for saline.

[AMcCord]

9 hours ago, Eagle Eye said:

We fill our bottles from saline cube daily.....our QC form we document visual check for saline.

Ditto.