OPUS104

You might contact Dr. John Neff at the University of Tennessee hospital in Knoxville, TN. (may be under UHS) He is the head of the pathology resident program and his doc's know their stuff inside and out. The hospital's general number is 865-544-9000 path. is 9080 good luck!

If we can identify the antibody, we release the unit with a tag stating what antibody was identified in the unit. Our units are all packed red cells with an almost residual amount of plasma. Almost all of our larger hospitals will accept these units with no problem. Some wash the units, but most do not. If we can not identify ALL of the reactivity in the sample, we defer the donor until the reactivity is completely Id'd.

What is the initial strength of reaction, and at what titer does the reaction weaken/go away? Not sure I can help..........but maybe I can give you our results.

When you say "issue ag. neg. with out crossmatch" I assume you mean that the patient's extended phenotype is known? We crossmatch with adsorbed serum but many of our hospitals can not do the adsorptions themselves. I, like David, do not issue "least incompatible" units. I tell the hospital that the units will be incompatible when they crossmatch with unadsorbed serum and just that. We use phenotypically similar units whenever we can not adsorb the auto away completely. Obviously we can not tell them that we have covered ALL antigens, but we do all of the "common" ones.

Our center has 6 mobile units (buses)for setting up outside a building, also two vans to carry our equipment to their sites if we are setting up inside a building. We waive a donor's (or any member of their familiy) rbc fee for a year if they donate. Also the usual free t-shirt and alot of times we have free coupons from vendors. i.e. Baskin Robbins,Chik-Fila. When we have special promo's we include all donors who try to donate but are defered for HEALTH reasons.

Our donor center uses Duo-Swab as our primary choice. If the donor has Iodine allergies, we use ChloraPrep.

We charge our hospitals 140 per LR RBC.

We use Fast Temp by FILAC.

You could REST adsorb the patient's serum to remove the suspected I or IH. However, the adsorbed serum can not be used for ABO testing as the rabbit stroma removes anti-B as well. The stronger reactions at 37 are strange for an I or IH. We have a lot of success with the REST system. Good luck and looking for your update