Prior to transfusion, testing is done to ensure that the transfused cells are immunologically compatible with the recipient. These pre-transfusion tests include ABO/Rh(D) typing, antibody screen, and crossmatching.
Could you elucidate why the cross match can be done electronically and does not require actual physical mixing? And could you comment on contemporary lab work - I have been told labs typically do NOT in fact conduct actual physical cross matching anymore. Is this true? Thank you.
I think there are machines that you can fill up with gel cards and add to it the patient's serum SST tube(either you centrifuge it and insert it, or the machine can centrifuge and take the serum of the patient) and you also add to the machine the donor's blood(the machine should be able to dilute it and add it to the collected patient's serum). The machine will do this series of additions in the microtubes of the gel card. Agglutination is indicated by the RBCs not moving completely to sediment at the bottom of the gel microtube. Hence, this is how cross-match is performed automatedly. At the lab I trained, they don't have such advanced machinery. So, they add the patient's serum(after SST is centrifuged) to a diluted form of the donor's blood that's collected whilst performing the blood bag unit donation in an EDTA tube(not the blood in EDTA tube is diluted after collection in a separate tube, they mix the diluted form well then add it to the well in the gel tubes, and then they add the SST centrifuged serum to it then they incubate the gel card for 10min to then read the results). I am also learning like you, but have slightly more experience probably.
