I would like to know what type of warm pack/container do your facility use for keeping the sample "warm" during the transport to the lab for cold agglutinin screen? Our facility uses the "baby heel warmer pack" to wrap around the sample. If they cannot found the baby heel warmer then they will keep the sample in a cup of warm water and deliver the sample to the lab "stat". Is this acceptable? Thanks.

We have a small 37 C compatment incubator in the Main lab just for stuff like this.  We keep tubes, syringes and needles in it along with a towel.  Everything is wrapped in the towel before and after phlebotomy and immediately brought back to the Lab.

 

We actually do very few screens for CAs.  We have this set up for the occasional cryglobulin order.

 

Scott

It rather depends for what you are going to test.

If you are doing titres and even specificities, go ahead and keep them warm.

If, on the other hand, you are testing for thermal amplitude, as recommended by Laurie Petz and George Garratty, THE gurus of AIHA, why bother?

Is this acceptable to do prior to blood bank type and screen/crossmatch testing?

54 minutes ago, natalynn said:

Is this acceptable to do prior to blood bank type and screen/crossmatch testing?

Well, in the very old days (about three months before I retired, according to me ex-work mates!) the only way we had for performing a type and screen/crossmatch was to use samples that had been kept warm, so I can't see that things would have changed that much (and we didn't kill "too many" of our patients)!

2 minutes ago, Malcolm Needs said:

Well, in the very old days (about three months before I retired, according to me ex-work mates!) the only way we had for performing a type and screen/crossmatch was to use samples that had been kept warm, so I can't see that things would have changed that much (and we didn't kill "too many" of our patients)!

Do you know if any validation has to be done in order to put this into place for our very strong cold patients?

To be honest natalynn, I don't.

We used to do the same.  I remember we had one patient whose cold aggs were so strong and had such a high thermal range we had to wheel her into our 'warm room' (a small room where we used to incubate all our microbiology stuff) to be bled for any tests.  And we had to bring small bits of equipment into the room as well.  But then I'm going back a very long time and tests were very unsophisticated then compared to now.  Can't quite see that happening today, somehow

1 hour ago, galvania said:

We used to do the same.  I remember we had one patient whose cold aggs were so strong and had such a high thermal range we had to wheel her into our 'warm room' (a small room where we used to incubate all our microbiology stuff) to be bled for any tests.  And we had to bring small bits of equipment into the room as well.  But then I'm going back a very long time and tests were very unsophisticated then compared to now.  Can't quite see that happening today, somehow

How very scary for her. : / patients get worried when they hear they have an antibody I could only imagine this....

Galvania do you know if the warm sand would need to be validated?

We would use it very very rarely but I like to have a plan in place if we do have a patient like this.

Sorry - who is talking about warm sand? 

But whatever - everything has to be 'validated' nowadays.  Regardless if it makes any sense or not