TopIntroduction
Before conducting a blood transfusion is necessary to perform a set of procedures to achieve the compatibility between the blood of the individual, who need to receive blood transfusion, and to select the blood for transfusion (Rod, Tate, & Trent, 2005)(Hoffbrand, Pettit, & Moss, 2004)(Caquet, 2004). The procedures to carry out include (Mitchell, Brain, & I. Bates, 2001)(Roback, Grossman, Harris, & Hillyer, 2011)(Hammering, 2012)(Hillyer, Silberstein, Ness, Anderson, & D., 2007):
- 1.
Determining the A, B, AB, O (ABO) and Rhesus (Rh) factor of the patient;
- 2.
Perform reverse grouping: ABO reverse grouping of the patient;
- 3.
Perform Rh (C, c, E and e) and Kell (K) phenotype for detecting the presence of antigens in the patient's blood. Search of other antigens may also be performed, but in few situations;
- 4.
Perform search for antibodies to detect the presence of significant antibodies. If the search for antibodies is positive, one should perform the identification of antibodies to allow selecting compatible blood;
- 5.
Compare the results with the previous data, if available;
- 6.
Select the red blood cells of the donor and perform the crossmatch.
All these procedures should be performed before administering a blood transfusion in order to ensure maximum compatibility between the donor and the receiver. For performing these procedures some techniques can be used, especially the plate test (Cressiers/Morat, 2008a), the tube test (Cressiers/Morat, 2008a), the microplate test (Hoffbrand et al., 2004) or the gel centrifugation test (Cressiers/Morat, 2008b), Table 1.
Table 1. Comparison of different tests procedure
Test | Test Principle | Technology | Time (Minutes) | Cost per Test* | Features |
Plate | Agglutination | Manual | ≈ 2-5 | ++ | Less sensitive, fast |
Tube | Agglutination | Manual | ≈ 7-10 | ++ | Sensitive, centrifugation necessary, fast, difficult to automate |
Microplate | Agglutination | Semiautomatic, automatic | ≈ 30 | +++ | Sensitive, centrifugation is not always required, fast |
Gel-centrifugation | Agglutination | Semiautomatic, automatic | ≈ 20 | +++ | Sensitive, centrifugation necessary, slow |
Cressiers/Morat, 2008a,b; Hoffbrand et al., 2004.
*From less expensive, +, to most expensive, +++