Use of the manual Polybrene test in the routine hospital laboratory

The manual Polybrene test described by Lalezari and Jiang was tested in parallel with saline, papain, and antiglobulin tests routinely used in this laboratory for antibody detection and identification and compatibility testing. Among 5381 patient sera tested, 264 antibodies were detected in 244 patients. In all, 6353 units of blood were crossmatched. The manual Polybrene test was generally more sensitive than the other three tests and was much faster. In order to detect anti-K, a supplementary antiglobulin phase was needed. The manual Polybrene test was less useful in detecting IgM antibodies.