Is there any added value in routinely utilizing the Immuncor Anti A,B reagent?

NO!  If the patient turns out to be a weak subgroup of A and/or B, why not give group O anyway.  You might say that this is a waste of group O blood, but I would use the counter-argument, how often is this going to happen, and so how much waste of group O blood is involved?

I agree with Malcolm. The previous BB supervisor loved A,B for all group O patients. One of the first acts I performed after taking over was to get rid of the use of A,B. Not only was it not necessary, but in my opinion it is a waste of money that could be spent elsewhere.

We routinely use Anti-AB to retype our Group O blood units coming in from our supplier. It is cheaper than using Anti-A and Anti-B for that purpose.

Edited May 31, 201312 yr by marvy1

We also get a pack of these every so often and use it for retyping O donor units.

Same here.  Only use it to type O units as they come in from our supplier.

 

Scott

Yes, I can see why you use it for that.

 

Over here, we don't retype the units in the hospitals.  I was thinking of typing patients only.

_{See the Polls forum on "Use of an Anti-A,B test result" for more ideas.}

Edited June 1, 201312 yr by Dansket

Same here.  Only use it to type O units as they come in from our supplier.

 

Scott

 

Ditto.

O units only...

We only use A,B for retyping donor units on arrival, other than that, no, we don't use for patient typing.

No value for routine patient testing.  Ditched it a couple years ago.

The Immucor package insert points out that the reagent may have some use in detecting certain subgroups such as Ax and as confirmation of your results with anti-A and anti-B. The incidence of Ax has been reported as 1 in 40,000, and as Malcolm and Magnum suggest, hardly seems a burning concern. And your reverse grouping should serve well enough to confirm your cell grouping. So we just use it, like others, to confirm group O donor units.

That being said, I'm curious, do any of you reference lab types have any experience in how well the monoclonal anti-A,B does in reacting with Ax cells compared to human-source? The insert says besides clones producing anti-A and anti-B, they include a clone that produces an antibody reacting with both A and B, which all sounds like a nice approximation of human group O serum.

We don't use monoclonal anti-A,B at all Phil.

We have some (very) old human anti-A,B grouping reagents that we froze down eons ago, and use that for the infrequent samples that we have to test for this reason.