CMCDCHI

I used to work in a reference lab and we would intentionally crossmatch with LISS because of the chance of getting a compatible XM in patients with WAIHAs. Maybe it is not the best inventory management, but I would always prefer to give XM compatible units, even if incompatible units would expire first. Even if it is just for piece of mind. We did have one patient who had an anti-Coa that appeared for a long time to be a WAIHA. His DAT was positive due to reaction with the Co(a+) donor cells. It took several reports of possible transfusion reactions to figure out that this was an example of an antibody to a high-incidence antigen. I believe it was finally figured out by doing what Malcolm alluded to: they tested the donor with several rare antigen-negative cells based on the patient's ethnicity.

One of our sister hospitals does hundreds a year because the the doctors order them. At our hospital the lab orders them based on fetal screens and we only do a handful a year. BTW- we both have large OB/L&D services.

Our hospital recently joined a larger system and "they" already use Sunquest BB, so there you have it! I'm fairly new to this hospital and I think HCLL is a little confusing. We'll see how it goes with Sunquest, but I haven't been hearing much good news on this forum.

I'd love any additional information- thank you!

We are transitioning from HCLL to Sunquest BB and we are expecting to sunset our HemoSafe because of the move. Does anyone have experience using a HemoSafe on a system other than HCLL?

Thank you all for your input. I won't worry too much about these seemingly conflicting results. There is a whole lot of "mixed media" in our lab. ECHO for routine type & screen, gel for antibody ID, tube for DAT. It makes me crazy not to have one system to rely on for one entire work-up. Most likely, we will be phasing gel out since our contracts are with Immucor, but our techs are very attached to gel.

We have seen a few patients recently with a positive autocontrol in MTS gel, but a negative DAT by tube testing. The majority of my experience is in a reference lab with only tube testing and gel is new to me. What do you make of the positive autocontrol results?