If you are just starting out in Transfusion Science you can really go a long way very quickly (and get a lot of marks in exams) by sorting out your antibodies from your antigens - I see such a lot of exam ansers where I can tell that the person knows the stuff but they get themselves in all sorts of knots with their nomenclature.
I've produced a list of what we are looking at:
- Phenotyping - here we are using known antibodies (in the antiserum) to look for the presence / absence of antigens on the patient's cells - antibody known / antigen unknown
- Reverse group (ABO) - we are using the known antigens on the reagent cells (A1rr, Brr and OR1r) to look for the presence / absence of the naturally-occurring anti-A and / or anti-B in the patient's plasma - antibody unknown / antigen known
- Antibody Screen - we are using reagent cells (two or three screening cells) which exhibit the most common antigens to try and detect any atypical red cell antibodies in the patient's plasma - antibody unknown (if present) / antigen known
- Antibody Identification - once we have detected atypical antibodies we test them with a panel of cells where we know their antigen makeup (whether or not each cell has each antigen or not) to identify the antibody / antibodies we have detected - antibody unknown / antigen known
- Serological Crossmatch - we have done the work and avoided antigens to which the patient may adversely react. We now test the cells (antigens) we want to put into the patient as a transfusion with the patient's plasma (antibody) as a last test to see if there are any antibodies in the patient plasma that may react with any antigens on the cells in the blood we will transfuse - antibody unknown / antigen unknown
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