Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

    Background and Aim: Life long red blood transfusion remains the main treatment for severe thalassemia. The development of anti–RBC antibodies can significantly complicate transfusion therapy. Microtyping (Gel method) is the method which is recommended at present for screening and typing of antibodies. The aim of this study is to screen antibodies by Gel method and to replace the tube method (Indirect coomb’s test) if suitable responses are observed.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 458 transfused thalassemia patients in Ali Asghar Children’s Hospital. Data were analyzed with SPSS V. 11.5. For parametric data, Chi–square test was used and for relation data Pearson chi- square was used. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant.

Results: In our study, there were 221 males 48.3%, and 237 females 51.7% with the mean age of 16.96 Yr. (SD±9.021) and age range of 1-60 years. Among the patients 11 (2.4%) had hemolytic reaction, 53 (11.6%) had allergic reaction and 88 cases (19.2%) had febrile reaction during the transfusion.

Alloantibody in 49 (11.8%) patients was positive (by microtube method), among which 40 (81/6%) patients had anti Kell or Rh (anti C,D,E,c,d,e) antibodies and 9 (18.3%) had unknown blood group antibodies or auto antibodies.

In our study alloantibody with tube method (indirect coomb’s test) was positive in 28 patients.

Conclusion: Mismatched RBC phenotype was found for Rh (c,C,E) and Kell, Kidd and Duffy (Fy^b, Fy^a) antigens. Our data showed that screening anti-RBC antibody with the new microtyping method (Gel method) is better than tube method.