Pretransplant compatibility tests in kidney transplants: Significance of adding HLA bead-based assay to direct cell-based cross-match assays - A case report

Pre-transplant compatibility work-up has evolved tremendously from conventional CDC only to CDC with more sensitive FCXM testing with bead-based assays (LMX and SAB). Detection of alloantibodies is one of the major objective in work-up algorithm. Conventionally cell-based tests were used, if both are negative, hospital usually proceeds for transplantation. If one of the screening tests (CDC/FCXM) is or both (CDC and FCXM) screening tests are positive, antibody identification is performed on Luminex platform to determine DSA by virtual cross-match. However, cell-based tests have their limitations. Here, we described a case which could have gone unnoticed if HLA bead-based assay was not there and could have triggered AMR (Antibody mediated rejection) as detected antibody (DRB1*07:01; BCM is 16416) was DSA.