Identifying Viruses in Blood Donations

Video Transcript

Finally, from the time the tubes come into the laboratory, we spin them down and separate them out into the various testing phase, this is quite lengthy. This process takes anywhere from 9 1/2 to 10 hours to the end of test results, that is if we have no testing problems. Testing, failures or voids are some of the possible problems. I also need to mention that another required testing is for dysenteriae which is the causative agent of Shiga's. Currently, we don't test for Shiga's in this laboratory. We send it out to another laboratory. That has delayed our test results by about 30 hours. It is going to be a required test. We are waiting for Shagus to come in on the Abbott prism, which we will then run it on that instrument. We'll bring it back in-house as testing. The most common viruses that we are going to actually detect in the testing are hepatitis C, an occasional surface hepatitis B, and HIV, which is very rare here in our laboratory. The law states that if we get samples here in our laboratory that are repeat reactive. This means that if we run the test the first time, it is called initial reactive, then as required by law, we must run it times two. If it repeats reactive, because we're running it with a screening test, which is designed to pickup any protein that is close to what we're looking for, a false positive reading may occur. We do get false positive results sometimes in the laboratory. Therefore, we must send the tests out for confirmation. The confirmatory test is very specific for that virus. So, we may get reactive samples or tests in the laboratory, but they rarely confirm. Confirmatory tests are done and then the donors are deferred temporarily.

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