Hi!

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas! Was Santa good to y'all?

I posted this question on the AABB site, but haven't received a response as of yet. (Does it take a long time to get a response from them?) So, I shall turn to my colleagues!

How frequently are we to activate the alarm on the blood bank refrigerators and freezers? I'm doing it quarterly, but is that what the regs require? If we can do it less frequently, I will gladly revise my method!

Have a Safe 2012!

We currently do it every month - not aware of recommendations in UK

Also document any alarms as they occur ie door open too long as that is a test in itself

We do it every day. But this is done electronically by using the "HI" and "LO" alarm buttons on the refrigerator and freezer panels, not by physically raising or lowering the sensor probe temps.

I just checked the AABB manual, 17th edition, and it says alarm activation quarterly, which means physically raising and lowering the sensor probe temps. We do a battery backup activation check daily. I didn't know we had to check the high and low electronic alarms daily. Is that a CAP requirement?

We do it quarterly as recommended in the AABB Technical Manual. We also document any alarms when they occur.

hi we check our fridge alarms once a week, we check them the same day we change the chart recordings.

We do this by either leaving the door open, we have a remote alarm connected and wait until this has registered before closing it. We were inspected by MHRA this year and they were fairly happy with the system

I just checked the AABB manual, 17th edition, and it says alarm activation quarterly, which means physically raising and lowering the sensor probe temps. We do a battery backup activation check daily. I didn't know we had to check the high and low electronic alarms daily. Is that a CAP requirement?

There has been much debate about whether the "physical" testing of probe temps is necessary on the Helmer refrigerators. Theory is...once you do a full validation that the high and low activation work properly and you verify temps with a certified thermometer, it's not necessary to put the probe in ice water, etc. Some inspectors are OK with this, some are not.

What other new method (for example, electonic crossmatching) do we fully validate, and then keep "going back to the old way" to make sure it still works? You could certainly argue this from both points of view.

I would think it would come down to whether the probe itself can change its sensitivity over time so would read a different temperature (this change would be caught at annual calibration). The next question would be whether the alarm system can change what temp. it alarms at over time (i.e. at what signal level (voltage?) sent by the probe does it respond). I would think that this is more of a risk from humans making changes to the settings than from the system itself changing over time, but I am no expert. I suspect those Labs that test daily or weekly are really trying to make sure no one has disabled the system rather than that it goes off at exactly the right temperature.

CLSI (used to be NCCLS) has a Tentative Guideline: Temperature Monitoring and Recording in Blood Banks. NCCLS Document 16-T Vol. 6 no. 19 hints that alarm sensors should be tested monthly. 5.3.1(2) Platelet Incubator-Rotator but then uses the term quarterly for blood refrigerator and freezers. I have requested clarification from CLSI, but have not heard back yet.

Thanks for the reference, Deb! Greatly appreciated.

We test weekly but more to check that the staff on our switchboard know what to do. We test the procedure rather than the alarm. If there are alerts directly then quarterly 'should' be fine... I do always worry though that the actual alarm will fail - paranoid Annie me