Survey on pretransfusion testing.
BACKGROUND
Hospitals and blood centers throughout the United States use a variety of reagents and methods to perform pretransfusion testing. A survey was developed to determine the reagents and methods in use and their relative prevalence in different work settings.


METHODS
A national survey on pretransfusion testing was conducted. Surveys were distributed to state and regional blood bank associations, which then distributed them to hospitals and blood centers within their region. In most instances, the blood centers distributed the survey to the local hospitals. Completed surveys were returned to the authors for review, and all information was entered into a database for analysis.


RESULTS
Analysis of the data shows that the majority of blood banks use monoclonal reagents for ABO testing and monoclonal-polyclonal blended reagents for Rh testing. The data show that anti-IgG and polyclonal antihuman globulin reagents are used almost equally for antibody screening (detection) tests and that most blood banks use a three-cell antibody-screening test. Slightly more than 50 percent of hospitals use an immediate-spin crossmatch in the absence of unexpected antibodies.


CONCLUSIONS
A number of approved reagents and methods are used by blood bank laboratories for pretransfusion testing. Facility size (number of beds) and type tend to influence the choice of methods and reagents employed. This survey provides an opportunity for blood bank laboratories to compare their current practices with those of their peers.
Maffei
L M
LM
Templin Management Associates, San Diego, California, USA.
Johnson
S T
ST
Shulman
I A
IA
Steiner
E A
EA
D001771:Blood Banks; D001788:Blood Grouping and Crossmatching / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D019538:Health Care Surveys / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006742:Hospital Bed Capacity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems; D014481:United States