CME cum Workshop on Advanced Immunohaematology by AIIMS, India, 2023 March

The "CME cum Workshop on Advanced Immunohaematology" was conducted on March 3, 2023 by the department of Transfusion Medicine and Blood Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, (AIIMS) India.

This program was open to staff, particularly doctors, residents, technologists and nurses working in a blood center, to educate them on Immunohaematology (IH). We would like to thank the ISBT academy and the ISBT central office for approving academy support for the organization of this educational event. 

This CME was conducted in offline mode with a total of ninety-six (96) participants registered for the CME, and more than 60 participants registered for the workshop. However, due to space constrain, we had to restrict the number to fifty (50) participants.

The CME began with the welcome address by Somnath Mukherjee, Additional Professor, Department of Transfusion Medicine, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar. Prashant Raghav Mahapatra (Dean and officiating Director, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar) inaugurated the program. Following the inaugural speech, the program was opened with presentations of the esteemed speakers. 

In the first session, Gopal K Patidar, Associate Professor from AIIMS, New Delhi, presented an "Approach to incompatible crossmatch.” He illustrated various reasons for the incompatible cross-match and their resolution. The next speaker, Abhishek B Gowda, Additional Professor from JIPMER, Puducherry, presented "Predictors of alloimmunization in Haemoglobinopathies". Gowda discussed various factors like patient, donor, and immune profiles as predictors of alloimmunization. This was followed by the presentation of Vijay Kumawat, Associate Professor from NIMHANS, Bengaluru, who presented the transfusion support in autoimmune haemolytic anaemia. 

The second session started with the presentation of Suvro Sankha Datta, from TATA Medical center, Kolkata, who shared his experience of establishing and validating a molecular blood grouping laboratory in a tertiary care blood transfusion center. He nicely presented a case discussion where the routine serology failed to identify the patient’s phenotype due to a recent blood transfusion and autoantibody development. But the molecular blood grouping technique helped to predict the correct phenotype. The second speaker, Ms. Mercy Rophina from the institute of Genomic and Integrative Biology, shared her work titled “Understanding the genomic landscape of Blood group alleles and antigens in Indian Population.” Her study revealed that the Indian subcontinent population has a unique blood group allele that differs from the western population. This was followed by a panel discussion on the transfusion support of Sickle cell Disease. Four eminent speakers and one moderator, participated in this panel discussion. Lastly, a separate session was dedicated to the NGS platform and its application in molecular biology. The lecture was delivered by Sumantra Ghosh, Ph.D., a scientist from Thermo Fisher.     

In the afternoon session, there was a wet workshop. The participants were divided into three different groups. The first group was shown the antibody screening and identification, the second group was demonstrated different adsorption and enzyme treatment techniques, and the third group was shown different elution techniques. The participants were moved into the next group on a rotation basis. The participants also had the opportunity to do some hands-on like solving the antibody screening and identification puzzle. The wet workshop was highly interactive; all in-house faculties and senior residents provided the training. 

The academic event received very good feedback from the participants. More than 90% of participants have rated 5 (excellent) or 4 (very good) for scientific content, speakers' knowledge and presentation content, duration, and impact on changing their current practices. The participants rated high (either 4 or 5) on the venue, food quality, and conference hall audio-visual arrangement. More than ninety percent of participants recommended a similar kind of CME cum Workshop in the near future. Finally, the Odisha medical registration council also awarded four credit hours to all the participants who attended this academic event.
 

 

The Authors