Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Self-performed Rh typing: a cross-sectional study
  1. Divya Dethier1,
  2. Mary Tschann1,
  3. Meliza Roman2,
  4. John J Chen2,
  5. Reni Soon1,
  6. Bliss Kaneshiro1
    1. 1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa John A Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
    2. 2Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Hawai'i at Manoa John A Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
    1. Correspondence to Dr Divya Dethier, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa John A Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA; divyad{at}hawaii.edu

    Abstract

    Objective To evaluate whether patients are capable and willing to self-administer and interpret an EldonCard test to determine their Rh status.

    Methods This was a cross-sectional study in Honolulu, HI, USA of pregnancy-capable people aged 14–50 years who did not know their blood type and had never used an EldonCard. Participants independently completed EldonCard testing, determined their Rh type and answered a survey on feasibility and acceptability. Separately, a blinded clinician recorded their interpretation of the participant’s EldonCard. When available, we obtained blood type from the electronic health record (EHR). We measured Rh type agreement between participant, clinician and EHR, as well as participant comfort and acceptability of testing.

    Results Of the 330 total participants, 288 (87.3%) completed testing. Patients and clinicians had 94.0% agreement in their interpretation of the EldonCard for Rh status. Patient interpretation had 83.5% agreement with EHR while clinician and EHR had 92.3% agreement. Sensitivity of EldonCard interpretation by patient and clinician was 100%. Specificity was 83.2% for patients and 92.2% for clinicians. Two patients (of 117) had Rh-negative blood type in the EHR. The vast majority of participants found the EldonCard testing easy (94.4%) and felt comfortable doing the testing (93.7%). Participants with lower education levels felt less confident (p=0.003) and less comfortable with testing (p=0.038); however, their ability to interpret results was similar to others (p=0.051).

    Conclusions Patient-performed Rh typing via the EldonCard is an effective and acceptable option for patients, and could be used as a primary screening test for Rh status.

    • abortion
    • abortion, induced
    • family planning policy
    • family planning services
    • Patient Advocacy

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request.

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Presented at This study was presented as a poster at the National Abortion Federation conference in April 2023 in Denver, CO. Preprint: A preprint of this study was previously published, DOI: 10.22541/au.169895045.59703791/v1.

    • Contributors All authors contributed meaningfully to the study. Study conception and planning was done by DD, MT, RS, BK. Statistics planning was done by MR and JJC. Study analysis was conducted by DD, MT, MR, JJC. Study write up was done primarily by DD with editing by MT, RS, BK. DD is the guarantor of this manuscript.

    • Funding The Society of Family Planning provided funding to the University of Hawai'i Complex Family Planning Division to support this research.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.