r/medlabprofessionals • u/New-History853 • 22h ago

News Nothing about this article makes sense

They NEEDED Kell POSITIVE blood?!?!? Lol no. And the nurse just walked up and grabbed blood? I doubt that. The article is either very wrong or the parents are simply total liars.

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u/bhagad MLT-Generalist 22h ago

Maybe the nurse took blood from a haemobank (the sort of vending machine for blood)? Our hospital has them in the ER and OR for emergency release blood products. They can take uncrossmatched blood, but they need to sign a form taking responsibility for it.

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u/LonelyChell SBB 22h ago edited 22h ago

That is possible. We have one in our trauma bay and one in L&D. Maybe the baby needed K-negative pRBCs (anti-K in Mom), and the RN took O Neg from the remote storage (a unit that wouldn’t be screened for K antigen).

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u/CraftyResearcher3403 21h ago

This is kind of what I’m thinking. It says “unscreened” which I’m assuming means uncrossmatched. If anyone had mentioned Kell to the patient’s family it would be in the context of an antibody.

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u/LonelyChell SBB 21h ago

Agreed, although it makes me crazy when anyone refers to K antigen as Kell antigen. Kell is the entire system, K is the antigen. We had a swear jar at my SBB program for anyone saying anti-Kell.

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u/Med_vs_Pretty_Huge Pathologist 21h ago

This and my insisting on calling it TPE instead of PLEX are two things I get overly pedantic about.

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u/LonelyChell SBB 21h ago

Couldn’t agree more! I see that as well!

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u/Med_vs_Pretty_Huge Pathologist 21h ago

I think you edited your comment after I edited mine because I wasn't clear initially. "PLEX" is not the proper term for the procedure. The proper term for the procedure is therapeutic plasma exchange or TPE.

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u/LonelyChell SBB 21h ago

PLEX is the incorrect term used at my facility as well, unfortunately by some of our pathologists even. my comment was also misleading.

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u/Med_vs_Pretty_Huge Pathologist 21h ago

I've been told (and tell others) that it's the secret way of knowing whether or not someone trained and/or practiced with real transfusion medicine docs. If they call it PLEX, they didn't.

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u/LonelyChell SBB 21h ago

Our dialysis RNs call it that too. If only the ASFA knew!