Hi, 

Can anyone share with me their practice? We hold crossmatched blood products for 48 hours then we cancel it and request another fresh sample in order to prepare it again if neccessay. The question is.... can someone out there hold it only for 24 hrs? how is the experience?Where can we find the regulation if any?

Thanks,

You can decide how long you want to keep units in crossmatched status.  This is probably dependent on the validity of your specimen.  There is no reason you can't release after 24 hrs. 

If you can electronically issue blood I suggest just ensuring the patient has a current T&S. If you need to do serologic cross matches then as David said above; you decide. It may just depend on why they want blood on hold. 

We routinely release blood products after 24 hours. There is a report we have that prints out daily with all the allocated units, the patient info for them, including the most recent H/H. The BB staff checks into each unit, why it was set up (usually hold for OR) and if the patient is currently stable with no impending procedures, we release it back to inventory. The patient's TYSC specimen is still valid, so another order for blood products can be placed at any time. 

36 minutes ago, jshepherd said:

We routinely release blood products after 24 hours. There is a report we have that prints out daily with all the allocated units, the patient info for them, including the most recent H/H. The BB staff checks into each unit, why it was set up (usually hold for OR) and if the patient is currently stable with no impending procedures, we release it back to inventory. The patient's TYSC specimen is still valid, so another order for blood products can be placed at any time. 

Is this still true if the patient has an atypical alloantibody, such as an anti-Fya and/or an anti-Jka?

Of course not Malcolm! To clarify - we only release for patients that are IS or electronic XM able, and only if the patient is stable with no impending procedures, and has a Hct above our threshold of 7. Patients with antibodies that require AHG crossmatch keep their units reserved for them for the life of the sample (3 days).