Baby Banker

We have SafeTrace instead of Soft, but we have made reconstituted whole blood for many years. We normally use it to prime a circuit. We treat the reconstituted units as if it were two units in one bag. We sign both units out in the computer even though they are in one bag. SafeTrace does not allow pooling of products which are of different product types. If Soft will allow that, you may be able to use that to avoid dealing with two unit numbers, etc.

Sad news. I never met him. I was fortunate enough to have known John Case, John Judd, and George Garratty.

That has always been my impression as well. On a related topic, the u in Du stands for Underwood. The first patient who was discovered (or at least the first one written up) was named Underwood. Frances Wideman told me that at a CAP Transfusion Medicine Seminar ages ago.

We use the screening cells. They've never been positive.

A question for those of you who have interfaced instruments: are you using autoverification.

We are experiencing all of that. The fact that my hospital refuses to even think about sign on bonuses makes it even worse. The hospital down the street has an $8-12K bonus and their benefits and pay were already better than ours. I saw a few weeks ago that a hospital in Philadelphia is offering a $20K sign on bonus.

We do this too, but the sops already posted have everything in them that is needed. I would caution you to not use saline as a diluent. We had a physician insist on it ages ago, but it doesn't work. You really need the oncotic pressure from plasma or albumin. If the concern is kernicterus, some places will use albumin. That's not usually why we do an exchange. We are usually confronted with a sickle cell patient with chest syndrome.

We've had it for a couple of studies, but we don't routinely stock it. We have SafeTrace Tx. I built a new product type for solvent detergent treated plasma. That prevents anyone from filling an octaplas order with regular plasma and vice versa. The product code for the pictured product is X0003. It will change to X0007 when it is thawed.

Also, if you waste time and effort on validation that is not necessary, you have less of both to do necessary validation. I mean what's next? Validating the change is the oxygen/CO2 ratio due to staff breathing?

In my opinion, you can run an antibody screen on the last wash instead of a full panel. Of course if the screen is positive, you'd want to run a full panel. I have never known the last wash screen to be positive.

You may be able to find something on the Pediatric Trauma Society site. https://pediatrictraumasociety.org/education/Journal-Scan/2018/august.cgi

I have it built into the computer system. It won't let you irradiate a PR platelet.

There is a section in the most recent Technical Manual (20th Edition from 2020) on platelet transfusions in neonates and children. It begins on page 685.

By the way, the AABB recently published a book on the validation and use of pneumatic tube systems to deliver blood products.

We have a Central Transport Department that picks up most of our blood from the Blood Bank, even during MTPs (MTP=Massive Transfusion Protocol). We have a pneumatic tube system, but we don't use it for blood products except when sending them to our satellite lab in the CV unit. We don't have insulated carriers; I don't even know if that is an option, but the transport time is so short that it doesn't matter, and since it is going to another lab, we are confident that it will be taken out of the PTS station quickly and put into controlled temperature storage. When I worked next door (large university hospital) they started using their pneumatic tube system to send blood all over the hospital. This was 'suggested' by consultants as a way to save money. They have had some challenges, but overall I think it works ok. Our pharmacy uses the PTS, but I don't know what procedures they have in place to ensure the right drug goes to the right place. I know they have them; I just don't know what they are.