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Pretransfusion testing without serologic crossmatch: approaches to ensure patient safety
1Transfusion Services, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. Kuriyame@umdnj.edu
Background And Objectives:
A crossmatch is usual in pretransfusion testing, but we eliminated it at our tertiary care university hospital. In place of the crossmatch, we have introduced a system where, if an antibody screen is negative, two technologists confirm the ABO of the same patient sample, and we release blood of the patient's type without a serologic or electronic crossmatch.
Materials And Methods:
In 65,628 samples received for pretransfusion testing, we studied the effect of common errors that occur from the time of receipt of a sample until release of the blood unit, in order to decide if elimination of the serologic crossmatch would affect patient safety. All sample labels were inspected for acceptability.
Results:
A total of 1,082 (1.64%) samples were rejected for mislabeling. Discordance in patient ABO typing results between two technologists was 0.43%. Such discrepancies were resolved before the release of blood units. No donor unit mislabeling or unit release errors were detected.
Conclusion:
Elimination of the crossmatch for red cell antibody-negative patients is safe provided a system of error detection is used. This enhances patient care through the quicker release of blood, increased laboratory efficiency and decreased costs.