Cold autoadsorption

Cold-reactive autoantibodies can mask the presence of underlying clinically significant alloantibodies in a patient’s plasma or serum. These autoantibodies are problematic when performing laboratory procedures such as ABO typing, red blood cell (RBC) crossmatching, antibody detection testing, and antibody identification. To avert the masking of clinically significant alloantibodies in a patient’s plasma or serum, adsorption studies can be performed at 4°C using autologous RBCs if the patient has not been recently transfused. Immunohematology 2018;34:158–160.