Matchead09

AABB Standard 5.23 Issue of Blood and Blood Components At the time a unit is issued, there shall be a final check of transfusion service records and each unit of blood an blood component. Verification shall include: (a list of items) 6) The date and time of issue. We record this electronically with a back-up (or down-time substitute) in the form of a sheet of paper signed by nurse and blood bank tech at time of issue.

I think David is right, standard 5.12 is under the heading "Transfusion Service-Related Activities" which I think makes it pretty explicit that the transfusing facility is responsible for this confirmation prior to transfusion. Standard 5.12.1 states discrepancies must be reported to the collecting facility, implying that it is not the collecting facility that is performing the confirmation. All the computer systems I've seen for blood bank have a transitional status for red cells that requires the retype to be performed prior to the units being available for crossmatch.

Does anyone have the article from Transfusion from July, 2014 about this they can share? Any other publications? I'm trying to find out how widespread this practice is, is this the new normal?

We recently looked at x-ray irradiators, they seem to run about $250,000-$275,000 with service agreements that cost an additional $1,500-$2,000 per month. Financing is possible putting the cost around $7,000 per month with service agreements for the first 5 years and then just the service agreement after that. We're currently paying about $9,000 a month for irradiation service from our supplier, but irradiating would mean we would need licensure as a manufacturer, which we do not currently have. So, for the moment we decided to sit pat and see how our irradiation needs change over time before making a decision. One irradiator we looked at was very self contained, the other required a water input of very precise specification as a cooling element.

Hey everybody, I wanted to see what you thought about the articles printed in the New England Journal of Medicine this April which seems to be at long last actual prospective studies of more than a thousand patients and their outcomes receiving blood at different storage ages. Here are the links I could find: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1500704 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414219 They seem to indicate no significant difference in the outcomes for the patients. Did this confirm what you already knew, or surprise you? Do you have any issues with the methods of the researchers or their conclusions?

Hey Nima, I have been doing a little research myself. I have focused mostly on x-ray irradiators due to their lesser security requirments. So far I have found Best Theratronics that makes the Raycell Mk2 blood irradiator and Rad Source that makes the RS 3400. Please let us know what you find!