younglau

We have always given our thal patients fresh, group specific blood in our facility. Recently I have heard that hospitals in another region are also washing the blood x3. What is the rationale behind this and how many of you do this? Thanks

We send out cards to all patients with clinically significant antibodies or any other special requirements due to treatment or disease. For example BMT patients that require CMV negative or irradiated blood products. We also suggest for the most severe cases that they obtain a Medic Alert bracelet. Cards get lost or forgotten, the Medic-alert system is more easily recognized and a much more permanent record of the patients requirements.

I also work in a childrens hospital, in Canada. Our irradiator has become a huge security issue for us that has required us to <deleted content> It is very expensive to maintain and you need to include costing for the "security" aspects of the irradiator. Can't advise on vendors, ours is ancient!!

We have Rhig history about 50% of the time. We assume it is passive (depending on the strength of reaction), set up a modified panel, confirm with the ward where/when patient rec'd Rhig and them do additional panel cells if required. It is very rare that we unable to discover the source of the anti-D.

We have an outpatient clinic that supplies our 28 week Rhig shots, however we are responsible for the testing and follow-up of these patients. The physicians provide the clinic with a Group and Screen result from this pregnancy (we have very little control over the timing of this draw as we only test some of them ourselves) Based on this information they are given their Rhig ,specimen is drawn prior to injection and sent to us to be tested. We do have to play detective and track down passive anti-D's from previous Rhig injection due to bleeds, amnios, CVS etc and yes there are the occasional alloimmunized mothers, we can never be 100% certain that it is a newly developed antibody or one that was undetected by the laboratory providing the original testing. I have worked in hospitals where they will only use their own testing for the issue of Rhig and the sample must have been drawn between 24-27 weeks gestation. I much prefer it the control that this gives.

This is what we do.... One unit per neonate (must be less than 10 days old at time of first transfusion) aliquoted as needed using sterile docking technique, irradiated but CMV not an issue no matter what the size/gestation of the neonate. The only time we use the same unit for neonates is when there are twins/triplets etc ABO compatible with a Directed Donation from a parent.

We have all kinds of dicrepant results with our Ortho products, they always say it is just us...........

We just started to "5S" our lab last week. It went very well and we got rid of alot of junk! It is an ongoing process and we will continue when time permits. Our Hospital has embraced the 5S concept and so far I think it has been well received.