Substitution of the “group-and-screen” for the full crossmatch in elective operations

For many years, the crossmatch has served as the pretransfusion determinant of compatibility between recipient and donor. The majority of units of blood crossmatched for elective surgical procedures are not used and many antibodies detected in the crossmatch are not of clinical significance. Motivated by the need to eliminate testing that does not significantly enhance the provision of a safe product, the necessity for doing crossmatches has …