Formulation of in-house screening and panel red cell for red cell antibody detection and identification in blood recipients: How to do it?

Detection and identification of clinically significant antibodies is an important component of pretransfusion compatibility testing. Most blood banks performing this test use imported screening and panel red cells, having their limitations. Blood centers do not use in-house formulated screening and panel red cells as there is a lack of such guidelines. This review article stepwise provides guidelines on screening donors for such reagent red cells, a pragmatic approach for phenotyping the donors for extended red cell antigens, of steps for selecting cells for formulating screening and panel red cells. Validation, storage, and quality checks of these reagent red cells are also discussed in the current article.