11 February 2021 (Thursday) - BTLP-TACT Excercise

Still sulking about Monday’s seemingly inexplicable failure, I thought I’d try another BTLP-TACT exercise this morning.
I logged in and got the “spinning wheel thing” that computers do when they are struggling. I had one sample – a request for two units of blood on a ninety year old woman; blood being required within two hours.

Her forward ABO group was A, but with no anti-B detectable in the reverse group this made her ABO group indeterminate. The Rh group was positive, and this was reportable since the control worked (I think that is what the software was expecting?)

The antibody screen was positive (1+) in cells  and two, so I requested antibody panels and got my lap-top to copy the antigram of the screen since the BTLP-TACT software then hides it.
The IAT and enzyme panels were positive in cells 1,2 and 3 and negative in all others which corresponded to anti-D but couldn’t exclude anti-Cw so I selected two units of O Rh(D) Negative Cw negative blood. (Given the phenotypes the unit were Cw negative)

Anti-D in a D-positive person… it happens…. Occasionally.

I got the green light…

10 February 2021 (Wednesday) - The Blood Smear Challenge

Here’s an interesting article from the nice people at Lablogatory. It talks about the “blood smear challenge” which is supposedly is the latest rage for the likes of us who enjoy posting videos on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Blood-ologists show off their skill by making the perfect blood smear. If any of my loyal readers can find any reference to this, please let me know – I’ve Googled and drawn a blank.

But the article then went on to say (quite rightly) that we should take care about doing this sort of thing. If you are going to use your phone in the lab to take photos of things (which I strongly advocate) take a care to wash your hands and/or have clean gloves on when handling your phone. And take a care about what is in the background of whatever it is that you are photographing or videoing. Let’s not have confidential information obviously available. And let’s not have people obviously mucking about either. Let’s be professional here.

We’ve got the technology – let’s not be luddites in not taking advantage of it… but let’s be sensible in what we do.

9 FEbruary 2021 (Tuesday) - Pro-COAG event

The nice people at Roche Diagnostics have made the video of their Pro-COAG scientific and educational event available to all. You can see it by clicking here.

I’ve often mentioned that this is the way forward. Rather than having meetings where people travel for miles (at someone else’s expense) just for a meet-up with their mates, or rather than having a webinar which is broadcast at a fixed time, videos which can be watched at the viewer’s leisure are clearly the way forward. I just wish more professional bodies would do this sort of thing. After all, Netflix have been doing this for years.

(Am I being picky by wishing that the speakers *didn’t*  look like they were reading from a script?)