hi all

i would like to know that if a particular patient has givn a blood sample for cross matching for a unit of blood as he had to undergo a surgery but due to certain reasons his surgery is postponed FOR HOW MANY DAYS COULD THAT BLOOD SAMPLE BE SAVED AND BE VALID AND UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS ? PLEASE GIVE REASONS''

Some of that depends on where you are. AABB and CAP allow retention of the sample indefinitely if the patient has not been tranfused or pregnant in the last 3 months and this history is available. Most facilities where I have seen the practice allow samples to be used for 2 weeks pre-transfusion if the patient meets the above criteria.

We do not extend the samples at my facility because we were not comfortable with relying on the patient to provide the necessary history.

thanx adiescast

Some of that depends on where you are. AABB and CAP allow retention of the sample indefinitely if the patient has not been tranfused or pregnant in the last 3 months and this history is available. Most facilities where I have seen the practice allow samples to be used for 2 weeks pre-transfusion if the patient meets the above criteria.

We do not extend the samples at my facility because we were not comfortable with relying on the patient to provide the necessary history.

This is very similar to what we do in the UK.

:):)

Our policy is to allow only 10 days for pretransfusion testing if the patient is not pregnant and has not been transfused in the past 90 days. This is per AABB recomendations and our own experience. If the surgery is delayed beyond that 10 day window, we have it re-drawn.

This is also assuming the patient has no positive antibody history.

We do the same as LaraT23. Some of the package inserts say to test on samples that are 10 or less days old.

If the patient is not pregnant and has not been transfused in the past 90 days, we extend the expiration of the pretransfuion sample to 21 days.

As long as you do the antibody screen within 3 days you can determine how long you want to save the specimen for xm (unless pregnant or transfused within the last 3 months). I've seen places that save the plasma frozen for up to one month. We will use our specimens for one week (mainly do to storage capacity).