What is the difference between an antibody screen and fully cross-matched blood?
In the antibody screen, the patients PLASMA is tested against commercially prepared “screening cells” which have a panel of known antigens. This procedure tells the technologist (if positive) that the antibody that is present in the patients plasma needs to be identified so that when the crossmatch is done on Units that are negative for the Antigen against the patients antibody otherwise there will be a transfusion reaction. In crossmatching, a suspension of the red blood cells from the unit of blood that is *** specific to the patient is tested with plasma from the patient to see if the unit is compatible and able to be transfused into the patient.
