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Bedside blood grouping
1Department of Laboratory Medicine, St Luke's Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri 64111.
Early attempts to provide bedside ABO grouping were abandoned in favour of the convenience of centralised laboratory testing. However, transport of samples involves the inherent risk of clerical error, which may result in a haemolytic transfusion reaction. One way to minimise these errors would be to verify the recipient's ABO group at the bedside immediately prior to transfusion. Card or slide haemagglutination methods may be utilised for this purpose, but a recently described dipstick technique is ideally suited for bedside ABO grouping, as well as a variety of other near-patient testing applications.
Early attempts to provide bedside ABO grouping were abandoned in favour of the convenience of centralised laboratory testing. However, transport of samples involves the inherent risk of clerical error, which may result in a haemolytic transfusion reaction. One way to minimise these errors would be to verify the recipient's ABO group at the bedside immediately prior to transfusion. Card or slide haemagglutination methods may be utilised for this purpose, but a recently described dipstick technique is ideally suited for bedside ABO grouping, as well as a variety of other near-patient testing applications.