RED-CELL ANTIBODY SCREENING, RED-CELL ANTIBODY IDENTIFICATION AND COMPATIBILITY TESTING WITH THE COLUMN AGGLUTINATION TECHNOLOGY (CAT) - THE BIOVUE SYSTEM

A new system for irregular antibody screening was described in 1993 by Reis K.J. This test is performed in a microcolumn prefilled with glas s microbeads in suspension in a neutral or Anti Human Globulin isotoni c solution. When the red cells are sensitized they are trapped by the microbead suspension during column centrifugation. 21365 irregular ant ibody screenings were performed with this Column Agglutination Technol ogy (CAT) and the results were compared to those obtained with convent ional manual tests. The CAT was more efficient than the manual tests. The number of positive samples containing specific antibodies was high er with CAT tests (924 samples) than with manual tests (802 samples). The CAT is easy to perform and the elimination of washing steps decrea ses the overall test time. It allows the use of this test for pre-tran sfusion compatibility testing particularly in emergency transfusion ca ses. The red cell age and more generally the red cell storage conditio ns seem to be an influential parameter on the percentage of unspecific reactions. In this study the unspecific reaction rate was low but we used only reagent red cells prepared every day. This new technology ma y be considered. as an alternative technology to the Gel Test in Blood Transfusion security.