Hello everyone,
 

I was wondering if anyone else is having issues with the screen strips for the Echo that have the lot number of R630 and expiration date of 08/25/2015.

 

Thanks!

CB

What issues are you having?  What lot is your indicator cells?

We're having a lot more NO INTs than usual with R630. Lot R643 is only slightly better. I have run them both against 2 different lots of indicator cells. Lots of ?s in mainly cell 2.

We are on Lot# R632 - no problems here, but we have seen this cell #2 problem in the past.  Changed out everything with no real resolution until we got a new Lot# of WBcorQC, since in our case, it was mostly the QC that was failing, patients were better.  If you are also seeing patient failures,  my best recommendation would be to get Service out to look the instrument over well (mini-tuneup) and get the newest lot# of RS3 strips Immucor can give you.   Best wishes.

Our QC has been fine. The patients have been the problem. And the majority (70% ish) of the problem patients are prenatals. Our backup is gel which has been negative for all of them. But in the last few months we've had 2 weak (1-2+)  positive Echo screens which were negative on gel and turned out to be anti-E per our reference lab.

Immucor is sending us a new lot of indicator cells to try with both of our RS3 lots.

We are also having issues with R630 mostly in #2. We changed the indicator cells but it didn't help much. Must be a bad lot#.

Have you informed Immucor? They might want to research a recall. Or at the very least you might want to request some replacement strips for the "wasted" ones. How many have been wasted?

I ran 9 prenatals which were negative with R643 using R630 strips. 2 were neg, 2 were pos and 5 were No Int. Most of our problems seem to be with pregnant women. Immucor is replacing them for us, pending approval.