Do you run positive and negative control for your anti-IgG (poly and monos)?

Gel users--Do you run negative control for your affirmagen and surgiscreen?

do you run QC on your MTS diluents?

We run a positive control on the Anti-IgG with check cells.

The negative control for reverse cells uses Anti-D through coombs phase.

The negaive control for surgiscreen is Anti-A through coombs phase.

We run a negative control on MTS Diluent by adding 25ul to an IgG gel card to rule out contamination of the diluent and card.

We perform a control on the Anti-IgG using check cells.

Our negative control for reverse cells uses Anti-D through coombs phase.

Because we use the pre-diluted screening cells, we run a positive and negative control on the MTS Diluent 2 bottle by making a red cell suspension using our bottle of diluent and a screening cell. We use QC Antisera for the positive and 6% albumin for the negative to rule out contamination of the diluent and card.

Our neg control for IgG is the anti-D test taken through AHG phase (for cells we alternate the A1 and B reverse cells each day because they are known Rh neg); then check cells are added which is the positive control of the IgG.

We run a positive plasma from a QC kit and a neg patient control with our pre-diluted gel screening cells. We use our diluent to make up a cell suspension from a unit (that we know will be compatible with our neg control--so usually O unit) and run it with both the neg and pos plasma controls to QC the diluent.

do you run a diluent QC on a daily basis? Or only with each new lot number?...I read the insert to say run on a daily basis with each lot---meaning each lot in use.

I think it depedns on your usage. I have seen crystal formation and bacterial growth in the bottle which was open for too long ~40 days). Your QC may be OK on first day but not on 15th day or 30th day so on. If you start seeing too many incompatible crossmatches where you might think you should have some negative crossmatches (depends upon antigen frequency)....you should check your MTS 2 vial.

We do run QC daily. Positive and negative.

We do a visual check of our MTS diluent daily. We had a dispenser get contaminated with yeast--very hard to eradicate. We replaced it. Now we clean the diluent dispenser weekly with sterile DI water and a few other tricks to minimize contamination.

We run a pos and neg plasma sample with a unit made up in the diluent so it mimics the reagents used in patient crossmatches.

We run diluent controls daily. Tube 1 is any of the screen cells + diluent in place of patient serum for a negative control checking for contamination of the diluent. Tubes 2 and 3 are an Rh neg cell (patient cell or donor segment) diluted with diluent to 0.8%, then tube 2 tested with diluted anti-D (negative) and tube 3 tested with diluted anti-c (positive). Tubes 2 and 3 are to QC the enhancement abilities of the diluent. These are in addition to the postive and negative controls we run to check the screening cells themselves.

Thanks for all the great ideas! This is the greatest asset in the world. Does anyone know of a forum that exists for microbiology?

www.microbiologytalk.com ???

We run pos/neg QC on our Panoscreen cells and we were cited a deficiency by CAP for failure to do so. It is in the manufacturer's directions for the mono-IgG MTS cards for daily QC and I would fathom to guess that the poly-MTS cards have the same requirement. We don't perform diluent QC, but we do clean the pumps, tubing and underneath the lid, with 10 primes of 70% reagent alcohol and ten primes of DI water. To clean the lid I invert and pour several mL's of alcohol followed by DI water while swirling to coat the surfaces of the lid. We had a contamination issue at one point but it resolved upon weekly cleaning of the pumps/lid.

Barr Antilla, BB coordinator