DOGLOVER

O negative, leuko-reduced (we use 100% leuko-reduced), irradiated, freshest available. We sterile dock on a syringe or pedi-pak to give the volume requested. Or you could keep an O neg unit with satellite bags attached from your blood supplier for possible use. It is always tricky when you don't work at a facility that routinely transfuses infants.

I called CAP and they said it is acceptable to use CAP samples for correlations. These are always strong enough that you shouldn't have a problem between methodologies. Otherwise you will just have to document that agreement was not expected. I agree, this requirement does not make sense for Blood banks.

We have a 50 bed NICU supply leuko-reduced, irradiated red cells routinely. We only wash for kids weighing less than 5 kg in open heart surgery. anesthesia worries about the potassium in these tiny babies with such large volumes being given. We don't worry about CMV status because everything is leuko-reduced. How would you handle washing for aliquots, the unit would outdate in 24 hours and the rest would be wasted? Our policy is that we don't share units between babies, and we try to limit donor exposure as much as possibel for neonates so once a kid starts a unit, they own it until outdate.

Am in the process of switching to Bio-Rad. Have validated the ABORH reagents as well as screening cells and reverse grouping cells. Also did Anti-S which reacted more strongly than Ortho's. anything we order from now on will be Bio-Rad except of course for gel reagents. It definitely is a pricing issue.

Wondering what most people are doing in the scenario where the patient is c negative and has made anti E. Are you providing E neg, c negative blood or just E negative. What about if the patient has anti-c, do you worry about E? Thanks for the input.