I'd love to know what everyone is doing about this.

Community Blood Center/Cmmunity Tissue Services uses BacT/Alert.

None, our supplier does testing, we transfuse.

We use pH paper to check the pH of all units. Any units with a pH of 7.0 or lower are checked with a hand held pH meter before the platelet unit is returned to our blood center for cultering.

We use the dipstick pH as do many area facilities to test our random units. Our blood supplier is using the BacT Alert for testing apheresis platelets.

Two very large AABB accredited, CAP accredited hospitals in the extreme southeast are using "swirl" until the supplier can get their act together. What a mess!

I know of 2 very large AABB, CAP hospitals in the extreme southeast that are using the old fashioned "swirl" technique until the supplier can do their job and test randoms appropriately. What a cop out by the suppliers!!!

I recently joined an institution that relies on the blood center using the swirl technique: we are not AABB, but the CAP checklist does not say this is not acceptable. As a matter of fact, they were inspected by CAP last year and did not have that counted as a deficiency. However, I contacted CAP and was told that the new checklist will have a revision of the question of testing for bacterial contamination and the swirl technique will not be acceptable.

Our blood bank is staffed by Generalists for second and third shifts, we choose to use a mini pH meter with a digital read out. It was easier and faster than to try to train everyone on the dip stick method. We're still waiting for an "approved" test.

We are a collection center and we do not test. The testing is done by dip stick at the hospitals. We then credit them for any plt. that does not pass.

I'd love to know what everyone is doing about this.

We use pH and glucose on dipstick.

Our facility used to double seal a section of the remaining tubing and cut it off and submit to Bacteriology ...did this on every unit for a long time until we determined that was not a problem, then continued to monitor once a month for QA issue. This worked well. If we pooled platelets, also did that on the pool tubing to monitor our technique!

Am retired now after 32 years , so don't know if they continued that momnitoring process!

cathy

We are a large trauma center. Our randoms are tested by collection facilities. Any randoms from a center that does not test, we dip for both pH and Glu. Our own pheresis plts are cultured using VersaTrek (which we validated)

Of those sites doing cultures, does everyone do both aerobic and anaerobic? Recently I had read article(s) that both are required but is this true?

We validated both aerobic and anaerobic, but we only culture aerobic. The theory being you are looking for skin contaminants.