Old Antibody Cards

[mld123]

When I took over as the supervisor at my current facility, I realized they were putting antibodies in the computer as well as keeping up with their manual antibody cards.  We are performing a computer back-up daily and I am trying to get rid of the antibody cards.   The antibody cards were updated to the computer during the last software update, but I am reviewing them all again anyway just to double check.

Question:  I have found some old antibody cards that have a name and antibody, but no medical record number or date of birth.  In performing a name search in the computer, I cannot usually find these individuals as they have never returned.  The majority of these are from the 1970's.  How did your facilities handle entering old antibody cards, if you remember?   Would you keep these old 1970's cards and make the techs review them during the patient's history review or just box them up and discard them after 10 years?

Thanks in advance for any input.

mld123

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

In the UK, even if we could identify the patient by three identifiers (FULL name, Date of Birth and Hospital Number), after a number of years (five, I think?) we would not take any notice of an antibody card that was not produced from our current computer system.  What you have to remember is that the antibody card (and the computer record, come to that) is only a "snap shot", and may well change over time.

[DebbieL]

We also had the antibody cards. Thank goodness for computers!!!!.

We had ours separated by years so technically we would have to look at multiple years on each patient. We were not good about looking too far back. Then we decided to compile them altogether which was better. Only have to look one place.

Once we made the switch to computers, we were still supposed to look each person up and we did that for a while. Then we went thru the cards at the beginning of each year for a few years and pulled the ones that were older than 10 years and discarded them. After a few years of that, they were boxed up and sent to the basement and discarded after 10 years. Most of the cards didn't have great info on them and were hard to match up anyway. I really hated the cards!! My previous boss got rid of the cards as soon as she could.

 

[Likewine99]

Back in 1994 we moved from cards to a computer BB system and discontinued even touching those dang things again.

I agree with Malcom, something from 1970, gee that could change dramatically and especially if you can't positively identify these patients I wouldn't worry about these pts or their associated antibodies.

When you say "The antibody cards were updated to the computer during the last software update, but I am reviewing them all again anyway just to double check." you have done your validation and due diligence.  Maybe create a document that shows you have done this validation and it's all in the computer now.

Away with the cards!!  Get some marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars, grab a fire extinguisher and head for the parking lot.  Smores for everyone.  Just kidding :-)  

 

[DebbieL]

I agree with the previous writer. We didn't check the cards against the first computer system but when we switched computer systems we had to make sure that the antibodies moved too. My boss pulled a number of patients out of her head, not too big to take too long and not too small that an inspector would fuss and she checked to make sure the antibodies moved. She wrote all the names down and put it in a file that I still have and could pull out if I had to.

I think we have had 3 computer systems since the paper days. We have a file that all the transfusion history, blood types and antibodies went into for each system. During validation of the new system she would check to make sure those items made it to the file. We used this for lookbacks and when TJC would show up. We could dazzle them with our files. Of course, this was all written down because you didn't do it if it is not written down. But I can tell you she didn't do but a portion to prove that it all worked.

[tbostock]

Box them up, but no worries if you don't have a second identifier, those cards are not too helpful.  It's a beautiful thing to finally get rid of the cards.