hihi everyone...3more weeks to go before the end of sip:)

anyway i was posted to the blood bank for this week... The blood bank operates 24hours everyday to provide the necessary testing so as to ensure the safe transfusion of blood and blood products. After spending the entire week in blood bank, I have a better understanding of the routine procedures that the laboratory is performing. During the week, I learnt the various types of tests that the laboratory is performing such as ABO blood grouping which consists of forward and reverse grouping, antibody screening, crossmatching and antibody titration. In addition, I also learnt how to process the blood stocks which will arrive from the CTM everyday.

now i am going to talk about something i have done everyday in the laboratory which is ABO Blood grouping and Rh (D) typing using the tube method. The ABO grouping is done to find out the blood group of the patients and to reconfirm the blood group of the donor. For ABO Blood grouping, there are forward and reverse grouping...for babies below 6months old, only forward grouping is done as babies at that age do not produce enough antibodies.

Method:

1. the patient's EDTA/clotted blood sample was centrifuged at 3000rpm for 6minutes.
2. 7 test tubes were being labeled and prepared
3. the first 4 tubes was added with one drop of each anti-sera: Anti-D, Anti-A, Anti-B and Anti-AB respectively. (forward grouping)
4. the last 3 tubes was added with one drop each of commercial A cells, B cells and O cells. (reverse grouping)
5. one drop of 3-5% saline suspension patient's red blood cells were added to each of the first 4 tubes.
6.one drop of patient's serum was added to each of the last 3 tubes.
7. the 7 tubes were mixed well and centrifuged for 15 seconds at 2000rpm.
8. after centrifuging, the tubes were gently agitated to dislodge the packed button of red cells and the tubes were examined macroscopically for any agglutination. for weak reactions, such as the big agglutinates could not be seen, they were examined under the microscope.
9. the results were recorded.

Agglutination Grading Chart

4+: A single agglutinate, no free cells can be seen
3+: A few large agglutinates
2+: Many agglutinates which consists of medium and small ones, no free cells can be seen,
1+: Prescence of many very small agglutinates, free red cells can be seen
0: An even red cell suspension with no agglutination seen.

thats about it:)feel free to ask any qns:)

Rachael
Tg01
0606168C