Today an ER physician asked us to perform flow on the mothers urine to detect fetal hemoglobin in the case of fetal demise. Is there a scenario where urine will give them answers where the maternal blood sample won't?

Never heard of this, however if the fetal cells are/were ABO incompatible with the mother, e.g. mother group O, fetus group A, the fetal cells would be hemolyzed/destroyed therefore not detectable in the maternal blood sample.  Do you know why they're requesting this and how they intend to use the results? 

No idea why. I was hoping someone on this forum might know! I only know the mother's CK was very high and her urine was brown (myoglobin?) predelivery.

it's been mentioned in passing in KB threads, but I wanted to ask anyway:

Our hospital has been sending KB stain testing to a reference lab when trauma is the reason for testing. For reflex FMH screens, we perform the testing in-house. This was a practice long before I came on board, and I was told it was due to legal reasons. However, I could not find anything in the California state law and CFRs regarding this. Does anyone have any insight into legal regs around KB testing? If not, I'd like to either bring the testing in house, or send it all out.

On 6/12/2014 at 5:32 PM, L106 said:

This is probably a stupid question...........So if the KB Stain indicates that the baby has bled into the mother, exactly what action is the doc going to take?

 

(Assuming the baby is not mature enough to allow the induction of early labor and assuming that the situation does not involve RhIG.)

 

 

Donna

In the UK the coroner requires it as part of the post mortem for any foetus that would have been compatible with life.