woebegone1997

I worked at a blood center for years and used the Raycell Mk2 (the 3.5L model, the larger model that can do up to 6 RBCs at once). It was a pain to install and maintain the water source to cool the system. During the colder months (in the Northeast US), the water source had to be bypassed because it was too cold. We had to keep tweaking the pump and the filter system until we found one that could handle our municipal water--amazing how much sediment is in it! The Mk2 was down a LOT, IMHO. It was not like Best Theratronics Cesium irradiator, which was almost NEVER down, but which nevertheless had to be replaced (a) because it could only do 1 RBC at a time, and (b) because of the onus of all the security and NRC regulations. Because it was down so much, and the blood center had to maintain a supply of irradiated blood/platelet products, we had to ask a local hospital to irradiate for us, sometimes for several days at a time. Having said that, I did hear that a nearby hospital was using the Mk2 2.0L model, the smaller one that can do up to 4 RBCs at once, and it was almost never down... You HAVE to consider that the X-ray tubes have to be replaced every 7 years or so, at a considerable expense. Best Theratronics is a Canadian company. Not that I have anything against our neighbor to the north, but the equipment was more than once held up by customs, and PM or repair was delayed, sometimes by several days. I am now at a hospital transfusion service (the one that I used to send the blood center's irradiation to during down-time!), and back to using the Cs-137 GammaCell 1000 irradiator. Because of all the security/NRC compliance issues, I would love to switch to an X-ray irradiator. In my research, I found the Rad Source RS-3400 quite appealing. The sales person at the company said that all PM & repairs--including the X-ray source replacement, are covered by the maintenance contract (15k/year). And this is an American company, so no customs delays! Carrie M., what has your experience been since you switched a year ago? Are you happy that you changed from the Raycell? Again, I would love to go away from the Cs irradiator, and I'd love to hear the comparison/contrast between the Raycell & the RS-3400 from someone who has experience with both.

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. You have all corroborated my interpretation of the CAP requirement. I will be following up with CAP, as Quality Guy suggested. I will post with CAP's answer!

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. You have all corroborated my interpretation of the CAP requirement. I will be following up with CAP, as Quality Guy suggested. I will post with CAP's answer!

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. You have all corroborated my interpretation of the CAP requirement. I will be following up with CAP, as Quality Guy suggested. I will post with CAP's answer!

I'm the manager of a blood bank, new to the organization. I was surprised to find out that my department does an audible alarm check DAILY for refrigerators & freezers. I was told that this was a recently revised CAP requirement. Now, I came here from another laboratory organization that was also CAP and AABB certified, and I knew of no such requirement (just the quarterly alarm checks). I'm thinking that this was some individual auditor's over-zealous reading of the daily temperature check requirement (acceptable by either documenting a temperature or using a graph/chart, including a "graphical recording device"). According to my staff who were involved in the previous CAP inspection, the auditor demanded to know how we know if the audible alarm is working between the quarterly checks. My answer would have been that we comply with AABB and the manufacturer's requirement for quarterly checks. Does anybody have any similar experience with this issue, or clarification?