The KEM Hospital here has successfully implemented a pilot project at its blood bank, to examine the viability of using gel technology to cross match blood, according to associate professor of pathology and officer-in-charge, blood bank, Dr Jayashree Sharma.
The technology called DiaMed ID Micro Typing System involves the use of gel cards and a gel card centrifuge machine. Marketed by DiaMed AG of Switzerland around the globe, gel technology has been introduced in India by Morepen India Pvt Ltd, which has exclusive marketing rights for its ID Micro Typing Systems for group serology.
The technology is particularly useful in patients of thalassemia, whose blood contains antigens from numerous previous blood donors, and this makes cross matching much more difficult and time-consuming than usual.
"After adopting the technology, we have been able to reduce the time used to cross match blood to around 10 to 15 minutes as compared to the conventional process which used to take us around two and a half hours. The cost of cross matching is around Rs 25. It is slightly expensive compared to the conventional manual system, which was being followed earlier. But the speed and accuracy of gel technology based tests makes it cost effective. Our pilot project has been successful," she informed.
The test kit is provided as gel held in microtubes contained in a plastic card. Each microtube contains sephadex gel prepared in a buffer solution such as LISS or saline. The gel may contain other elements: preservatives such as sodium azide, specific reagents such as AHG or other specific antisera for grouping, sedimenting agents like bovine serum albumin, etc. These reagents are added to the gel at the same time of manufacture.
Thus, the regent is uniformly dispersed throughout the length of the gel column. Six of these microtubes are embedded in a plastic card to allow ease of handling, testing, reading, and disposal. A wide range of test systems is available including red cell typing, DAT, antibody screening & identification and compatibility testing.
The ID Micro Typing System is considered to be a major technological advancement over conventional methods for ABO/Rh typing, typing for rare blood groups, antibody screening and identification and cross matching for blood transfusion.
Gel tests are simple and fast. Results too are easy to interpret. Most of the blood banks in India only do forward and reverse grouping along with cross matching before blood transfusion, since they do not have facilities to screen and identify antibodies.