A cross match is used to check the compatibility of a donor and recipient’s blood. It tells you whether an adverse reaction is likely when you give the blood of a particular donor to a particular recipient.

Please refer to the specific canine or feline pages for guidance on when a cross match should be performed.

Pet Blood Bank offers two options for canine cross matching, depending on whether you have the facilities available to cross match in-house.

IDEXX cross match service

Pet Blood Bank provides a canine cross match service with IDEXX Laboratories (Wetherby only). This evaluates the compatibility of your recipient’s blood against six of our packed red cell units.

The DEA 1 status of the patient (positive or negative) should be established before requesting the cross match. This allows us to use six units of DEA 1 type compatible blood for the cross match. If no blood type is provided, we will send a mixture of both DEA 1 positive and negative units for testing. This service can also be used to assess the compatibility of your patient’s blood against the blood of your selected in-house donor.

For instructions on how to access our service with IDEXX, please see the form at the bottom of this page. This service must be booked before 3pm on the day you plan to send your samples to IDEXX to allow time for our unit samples to arrive at IDEXX in time for testing.

Once your recipient has been cross matched against our packed red cell units, IDEXX will send the results to you directly. After reviewing your patient’s cross match results, you can place an order for the most compatible unit using our online cross match unit order form. We will then supply you with the requested unit on a same day or next day delivery service. 

In-house cross match service

Pet Blood Bank can supply blood aliquots to you for in-house cross matching against our blood units. As with the IDEXX service, aliquots from six of our DEA 1 type compatible units will be sent to you to perform a cross match.

For instructions on how to access this service, please see the form at the bottom of this page. This service is available 24 hours a day. If the aliquots are requested out of hours, we can only offer a same day delivery service for the supply of aliquots and any requested cross match compatible units.

Once your recipient has been cross matched against our packed red cell units, you can place an order for the most compatible unit using our online cross match unit order form. We will then supply you with the requested unit on a same day or next day delivery service.

Delivery options and prices

For delivery options and prices, please see our price list.