title: Stability of user-friendly blood typing kits stored under typical military field conditions.
abstract: To help preserve in-theater strength within deployed military units, commercially available, rapid, user-friendly ABO-Rh blood typing kits were evaluated to determine their stability in storage conditions commonly encountered by the warfighter. Methods for environmental exposure testing were based on MIL-STD-810F. When Eldon Home Kits 2511 were exposed to various temperature/relative humidity conditions, the results were comparable to those obtained with the control group and those obtained with industry-standard methods. For the ABO-Rh Combination Blood Typing Experiment Kits, 2 of the exposure treatments rendered them unusable. In addition, a third set of exposure treatments adversely affected the kits, resulting in approximately 30% blood type misclassifications. Collectively, this evaluation of commercial blood typing kits revealed that diagnostic performance can vary between products, lots, and environmental storage conditions.
authors.affiliation: Navy Medical Research Center Detachment-Great Lakes, General Dynamics Information Technology, 310A B-Street, Building 1-H, Great Lakes, IL 60088, USA.
authors.forename: Diane R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Bienek
authors.forename: Cheow K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: David G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Charlton
mesh_terms: D001788:Blood Grouping and Crossmatching / Q000295:instrumentation*; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D004355:Drug Stability; D004356:Drug Storage / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D006813:Humidity; D008887:Military Medicine; D011933:Reagent Kits, Diagnostic; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D011933:Reagent Kits, Diagnostic