Erythrocitary antibody detection in polytransfused patients using polyethylene glycol and polybrene

摘要

One of the most important aspects of immunohematological practice is the detection and identification of antibodies, and the production of alloantibodies against red cell antigens is a frequent complication of transfusion. There are several methods with a different level of sensitivity to detect the presence of antibodies in the serum of transfused patients. A prospective, cross-sectional study was performed including all patients polytransfused with packed red cells at the Institute of Hematology and Immunology in the period of one year, in order to detect red cell alloantibodies that could cause transfusion reaction. We considered polytransfused patients with transfusions over 2 times. The sample consisted of 151 patients. The manual polybrene test and the polyethylene glycol-antiglobulin test were used. In 28 cases (18.5%) the presence of antibodies was detected. Cross tests were positive for 11 patients (39.28%), the investigation of antibodies by polyethylene glycol in 85.7% (24 patients), and polybrene in 6 patients (21.4%). The comparison showed that polyethylene glycol was the most sensitive in the detection of antibodies even when autoantibodies with no transfusional relevance were detected in 22% of the patients.