Reliability in Automatic Determination of the ABO Group by the Groupamatic System

Abstract

The reliability of the automatic determination of the ABO group on the Groupamatic is explained and backed up with an experience of 600,000 runs. Provided the user observes the rules of conventional serology, this reliability depends upon three essential, combined actions of the machine: identifying the sample, reading serological reactions, processing and printing-out grouping data. Figures taken from 150,000 ABO groups enable us to compare the frequency of detected weak A sub-groups with known properties; tests performed on samples of chimeras or of Bombay phenotypes, associated with experimental work on artificial chimeras, confirm the high reliability this automatic system provides.