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Temperature Indicators


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Hi everyone, I'm new to the group and excited to be here. I work at the community blood center in Austin, TX. I am working with trauma hospitals, EMS and air transport facilities to develop a pre-hospital whole blood transfusion program in our area. EMS and air transport facilities will use coolers to store blood for a week. They will then return any unused WB to the blood center and we will redistribute the products to trauma hospitals. We will require storage temp of 1-6 for EMS/air transport agencies keeping WB. The coolers they are working on validating are the Pelican Credo ProMed series that hold temp really well (<6 for up to 3 days). For added assurance, our team would like to use temperature indicators on the WB bags. We tested Safe T Vue 6 indicators and found that the color change happened quickly and easily if you accidently touch them while placing them on or handling the products. We weren't impressed with the color change either in that they turned pink (not red). We feel like we would have to discard a lot of units using these indicators and we've heard this was the case with other organizations who have used them.

We are looking into the Blood Temp 6 indicators by Timestrip https://timestrip.com/products/blood-temp-6/ and I'm interested to know if anyone has experience with these that they could share. Also interested in any other ideas for 1-6 degree temp monitoring outside of the blood bank. Thanks in advance for your help!

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Justine,

We switched from the Safe-T-Vues a few years ago for the same reasons.  We use the Blood Temp 10s in our coolers (we validated for transport not storage) now.  They are great and easy to validate with the coolers.  The only thing is you have to make sure to place the indicator in the middle of the bag (on the back) and not the top or bottom because it can activate if there's no enough blood under the indicator.  We've had problems with our washed RBC units and small volumes in transfer bags if they're not folded properly before going into the cooler.  But I can't imagine having the same problem with whole blood.

You can also get a temperature monitored cooler from MaxQ (they come pre-validated) https://www.packmaxq.com/  The Max Plus Alpha 2.0 has continuous temperature monitoring but I think it's only good for 24 hours.  There may be other continuously monitored coolers out there we just use the MaxQ coolers so I have experience.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/12/2021 at 7:52 AM, Justine Garza said:

Hi everyone, I'm new to the group and excited to be here. I work at the community blood center in Austin, TX. I am working with trauma hospitals, EMS and air transport facilities to develop a pre-hospital whole blood transfusion program in our area. EMS and air transport facilities will use coolers to store blood for a week. They will then return any unused WB to the blood center and we will redistribute the products to trauma hospitals. We will require storage temp of 1-6 for EMS/air transport agencies keeping WB. The coolers they are working on validating are the Pelican Credo ProMed series that hold temp really well (<6 for up to 3 days). For added assurance, our team would like to use temperature indicators on the WB bags. We tested Safe T Vue 6 indicators and found that the color change happened quickly and easily if you accidently touch them while placing them on or handling the products. We weren't impressed with the color change either in that they turned pink (not red). We feel like we would have to discard a lot of units using these indicators and we've heard this was the case with other organizations who have used them.

We are looking into the Blood Temp 6 indicators by Timestrip https://timestrip.com/products/blood-temp-6/ and I'm interested to know if anyone has experience with these that they could share. Also interested in any other ideas for 1-6 degree temp monitoring outside of the blood bank. Thanks in advance for your help!

We use the Safe-T-Vues but people have to learn that they are not out of temp until the whole circle is completely red.  They also have to learn not to handle them too much when applying them, especially the hot-handed people.  How are you meeting the requirement for alarms on your coolers?  If you are recording the temperatures at least every 4 hours, I guess that might get you by.  I consider holding blood for days in a cooler to be storage not transport so alarms are required (or Q 4 hour temperatures).

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