For those of you still using whole blood platlets...a few questions:

1. Pool size--what do you do?

a. Physician order number of units to be pooled.

b. Have standard pool size (adult dose). If so, how many WB platelets per pool?

c. Based on weight of patient.

d. Something else.

2. For option (a) in question #1:

What is the average (typical) pool size ordered?

For option ( in question #1:

How was the standardized pool size determined (calculation--if so, what; literature, etc.)?

For option © in question #1:

Is the transfusion service provided the weight and then subsequently provides the product?

or-- does the physician calculate dose based on weight and order that amount of product?

For option (d) in question #1:

What do you do?

Thanks in advance for your reply! We currently let the physician decide the number of units to order and I find they still are ordering 8-10 per pool rather than the desired 4-6 units/pool and I'd like to make a change.

Hi Terri,

We use 4 random donor platelets as our standard order for adult pools. I am not exactly sure how that was derived but it had something to do with the average platelet concentration per bag. I can tell you that we use Apheresis platelets, random donor pools, and 5 day pre-pooled (bacterial tested) interchangably when platelet transfusion of whole blood platelets are ordered. The Blood Bank uses their discretion which product is issued based on availability. On average, the patients platelet count will be raised by 50-70 thousand by each standard platelet transfusion.

Dawn

Our policies are very similar to Dawn's, except we use a pool of 6 and we don't have pre-pooled Platetets.

We interchange apheresis and pooled plts for some (not all) patients, depending on availablilty.

Linda Frederick

Our pool size is 5 units. Our policy for interchanging aphersis and whole blood platelets is the same as Linda's. We do for some but not all - based on availability from our blood supplier.

We always pooled 6 - 10 units and then we realized that we could not pool more than six and still consider them leukoreduced. If a random LR plt has to be <8.3 x 10^5 then you can not pool more than six.