Wow! What a great web site! We currently have a patient identified as having Anti-Rh17. After preliminary work-up, we sent her specimen off to a Red Cross reference lab for confirmation. There are a number of us here at my lab with or than 25 years on the job and have never seen this! Luckily for us and the patient, she is healthy, having elective surgery in which she can donate autologous blood. We haven't checked siblings yet, but will attempt to.

There are not too many units available for that patient. We had one about 16 months ago . . . got the only 2 available in the US at that time. Very interesting stuff.

Welcome to Blood Bank Talk, Lori. Yes, it is a terrific site. It a great place to share ideas, problems, and solutions and learn a little along the way. Some of the posts have me grabbing my Issitt "Blood Group Serology" book, and your post was one of those!! Hope that patient does well!

Donna

Welcome Lori.

Cases like yours don't come along every day. Enjoy it (I know, I'm perverse).

Don't forget to freeze down some of the plasma and red cells for use in the future in reference cases.

:D:D:D:D

Is she signed up for the National Rare Donor Registry? How about her siblings? What is her ABO group?

Thanks

We had an OB patient with anti-Rh17. She had to donate autologous blood all during her pregnancy for intrauterine transfusions because there were not enough units available at the time.. The blood bank issues were a nightmare, but the baby survived. If your patient agrees to donate blood regularly, she would help patients all over the U.S.