Hello,

 

I was just wondering if anyone else has had this problem:

 

 

How do you resolve it?  It's been  happening to us intermittantly for quite awhile.

 

We've done several things to try and resolve it from changing lot numbers, cleaning the washer, changing the probe.  We thought it might be the stirring mechanism not working but even replacing that hasnt fixed it.

 

Typically it repeats as a fail (not always though) for the patient which leads us to believe that it's sample related.

 

Just curious if anyone else has experienced this.

 

Thanks for your insight!

If you have the manual system, I would repeat on there just to see if its instrument or reagent related.  The picture is small and grainy but it looks like the control button is not as tight as it should be.  This sounds stupid, but if its intermittant, are you making sure theres a stirball, and only 1, in the indicator cells??   How's the QC on your probe dispense test to make sure its not running out of fluid by the time it gets to well 8 of the strip.  And the most useless advice, have you called Immucor??

If you have the manual system, I would repeat on there just to see if its instrument or reagent related.  The picture is small and grainy but it looks like the control button is not as tight as it should be.  This sounds stupid, but if its intermittant, are you making sure theres a stirball, and only 1, in the indicator cells??   How's the QC on your probe dispense test to make sure its not running out of fluid by the time it gets to well 8 of the strip.  And the most useless advice, have you called Immucor??

If you click on the picture it should make it bigger

And yes we have done all of your suggestions, we're just curious if anyone else experiences(or has experienced) this problem and how they resolved it.

I was having weird problems recently with weakly reactive positive controls and patient tests with anti-D. The buttons were small and loose like the image you attached - the positive controls were reading 1-2+ instead of 3-4+. It started out as an intermittent problem, just some of the patients. They would usually repeat with weak reactions. A couple of days later the controls started getting a bit weaker. The next day, most of the patients were weak, so we took it out of service. Did as much troubleshooting as we could think of and called service. Everything checked out when service came...centrifuge speed, volumes dispensed, shake, etc. My service engineer finally thought of changing the pinch valve associated with the probe. Normally when this valve fails fluid drips from the probe, but he thought maybe the valve was not opening fully, dispensing less reagent as it went through it's dispense cycle. That did the trick. All my positives were back to normal, nice and strong with good buttons.  

Edited December 11, 201311 yr by AMcCord

Is this happening throughout the day or just after new indicator cells are put on? If they're cold, it could cause them to agglutinate. Have you seen if it's a problem with the strips? If the monolayer wasn't put on the strips correctly that could cause the problem with the control well. Is it happening with QC or just patients?

I was having weird problems recently with weakly reactive positive controls and patient tests with anti-D. The buttons were small and loose like the image you attached - the positive controls were reading 1-2+ instead of 3-4+. It started out as an intermittent problem, just some of the patients. They would usually repeat with weak reactions. A couple of days later the controls started getting a bit weaker. The next day, most of the patients were weak, so we took it out of service. Did as much troubleshooting as we could think of and called service. Everything checked out when service came...centrifuge speed, volumes dispensed, shake, etc. My service engineer finally thought of changing the pinch valve associated with the probe. Normally when this valve fails fluid drips from the probe, but he thought maybe the valve was not opening fully, dispensing less reagent as it went through it's dispense cycle. That did the trick. All my positives were back to normal, nice and strong with good buttons.  

 

Thanks for the insight, this appears to be exactly the same problem we are having.

Is this happening throughout the day or just after new indicator cells are put on? If they're cold, it could cause them to agglutinate. Have you seen if it's a problem with the strips? If the monolayer wasn't put on the strips correctly that could cause the problem with the control well. Is it happening with QC or just patients?

 

It's sporadic, all different times / techs / shifts.  Doesn't seem to be a reagent problem as it is across all lot numbers.  Just patients. 

I just realized.....I said it was a pinch valve, but that's not the kind of valve it is - maybe a rotating valve, but definitely the one for the probe dispense function.

Replace the washer manifold.