In CAP question TRM.31400 it states in the notes that "Anti-IgG reactivity of antiglobulin reagents may be checked during antibody screening and crossmatching." It is my interpretation that we no longer have to set up a QC tube with anti-IgG and check cells as you are adding check cells to all negative patient antibody screens. Is this correct? Also, it is stated that "Typing sera and reagent cells must be checked for reactivity and specificity on each day of use, including a check against known positive and negative cells or antisera." Does this mean I have to have a positive (commercial QC) and negative (saline or such) for the antisera and cells?

Since check cells are used with every negative Anti-IgG tube test, you are correct that you don't have to run QC on the reagent separately. I run a positive and negative Anti-IgG and CC control as part of my QC Setup. I gave it no serious thought, though, since I had to anyway.

There is a controversy about running a pos and neg control with each ABO reagent. Some use normal testing, since the forward and reverse check serves the same purpose. My QC Kit states that positive controls are sufficient, but you can run negative controls if it makes you feel better. However, the product inserts usually states that a positive and negative control must be run on each day of use, so that's what we do.

We do no extra cc controls, and we run both a neg. and pos. for every antisera we use. (including ABORh)

For the daily QC of reagent cells (screening cells) we run a known negative patient (gel) and a commercial positive QC antibody that will react with all 3 screen cells.

We don't use all typing sera every day so we just test known antigen-negative and (weak or single-dose) positive cells against the antisera when we use it.

ProVue & MTS Gel users----------Do you know that QC kit is available from ortho--next month!!

I have not received any notification of a QC kit being available from Ortho for the Gel system. Wander why????

The QC kit is available (and has been). It is more for the Provue and is produced by Alba Bioscience (I think). For manual gel I think it is cost prohibitive.