I am curious if the negative responses from the inspection teams include primary antibodies that have been aliquoted and frozen.  Do they consider those expired if they are past the expiration date suggested by the manufacturer?  We are undergoing CAP inspection on Friday (5th) feed back would be appreciated.  I think that it is crazy with all of the hoops the have us jumping through with documentation for testing and validating, that they would make us discard the $$$$$$$$ in primaries.  Makes no sense to me either.  I will be interested to see what happens with our inspection.

Richard Cartun  wrote:It has been brought to my attention that the CAP Laboratory checklist
has been revised as of 9/30/04 and now includes a question, "Are all
immunohistochemical reagents used within their indicated expiration
dates?". I have always believed that it is acceptable to use expired
regents (mainly primary antibodies) as long as their reactivity is
acceptable and documented. Obviously, the expiration date that
manufactures use is not an accurate reflection of the reagent's
likelihood of poor performance. Does anyone have information on this
change? Thank you.

Richard

Richard W. Cartun, Ph.D.
Director, Immunopathology & Histology
Assistant Director, Anatomic Pathology
Hartford Hospital
80 Seymour Street
Hartford, CT 06102
(860) 545-1596
(860) 545-0174 Fax

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Amy S.Porter, HT(ASCP) 
Michigan State University 
Department of Physiology 
Division of Human Pathology 
College of Human Medicine 
portera203@yahoo.com


			
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