The Donath Landsteiner Test

Here's a short video of me explaining the Donath Landsteiner test which we use when we are trying to sow thw presence of a biphasic antibody - that is one which binds to antigen in the cold and activates complement in the warmth. These antibodies do not bind in the warmth so antibody panels are often negative.

Elutions

Here's a short video about the elution technique

The one thing I want to make really sure of is the reason for the last wash and reataining it. You always test your last wash in parallel with your eluate. Only if your last wash shows no reactivity can you say that any antibodies detected in the eluate have come off the cells you are performing the elution on.

The "negativity" of your last wash demonstrates that you have washed away all unbound antibodies from your sample before you perform the elution so, any antibody detected in your eluate must have come from the cells.

Antibody Identification Panels

This is just me trying out some new technology (to me). I'm trying to sort out how to get video of a good enough quality without having the huge file size. So far I've failed and this one is about 52Mb to upload! Apologies all for making such a pig's ear of it over the weekend.

If you want to follow handouts I've already given you then you need to go to the next slide when you hear a guitar ping.

Comments would be really useful!

Bloom's Taxonomy - You Should Know This!

I cannot stress how much all of us involved in education, either on the teaching or on the learning side of things, should have some knowledge of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning.

One of the biggest problems is that learners do not understand what level of knowledge is required of them and tutors don't know what level of knowledge they are required to teach to.

All too often, in the past, it has been left up to the individual tutor to "know" what level of understanding is required. But over time we have all drifted in our various directions so we are all teaching and learning to different levels.

Sounds alarming? It should do!

This is one of the reasons why the development of standards seems to be pre-occupying those at the top of the NHS and Blood Transfusion. If you have a well written standard then everybody should know what is expected of them - they would do if thy understood the learning levels as outlined by Bloom.

So take a bit of time to have a look at the diagram and understand what the different levels required of the learner as far as understanding what they are doing.

If we know what the target is then we can have a good idea of how we are progressing towards our goal (and if we are not then we have a better idea of what we need to do to get back on track again).

Email Posting Test

This is just me checking if I can email content from my computer at home to my Transfusion Blog

 

 

Andy Test - BCSH Guideline on Massive Transfusion

Andy Test - BCSH Guideline on Massive Transfu… » Quiz Maker

Know Your Abs from Your Ags

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:

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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