Our facility has no experience with using the pneumatic tube to transport units of blood. We are building a new emergency room that is in another building and the question has come up. Do you have to use a certain type of pneumatic tube or will any old one work? If anyone would be willing to share their signout policy and validation protocol, I would be grateful.

Thanks!

Hi Jane,

We have two tube systems. They grow all the time here.

Our Pevco system works OK for some of the smaller routs, but can't handle the loads of our main system.

Our main system is from TransLogic. It is fantastic. Our facility is 16 stories and some parts are over 1/4 mile away too. It has the ability to pull at least three units to either of those locations.

As for issuing (signout) we simply indicate "T" for tube for the transporter. The validation was a bit tougher. Like most validations we created it on our own.

We measured:

Trip time

Product temp

Cannister Temp (using a TempTale)

Weight of products.

We did 20 runs with an empty cannister, 20 with multiple cold products and 20 with multiple RT products. We set what we felt were acceptable limits.

There are many stations here, we don't approve all of them for blood products at this point. In our EW, they are extremely large so we have a remote alarm system to alert them that blood has arrived. For another high use floor, they need to enter an access code to remove the cannister. They can't shut off the alarm or use the tube system until they do.

Let me know if you have any other questions, I'll be glad to help.

I just e-mailed Jane a complete packet of info including SOPs and validation plans. I hope they help.

Hi John,

Would you be willing to share those? Word docs and pdf files can be attached to posts here.

I tried but got the message "The Extension dot is not allowed".

It is a word document. Any suggestions?

My apologies. In setting up this new version of the forum, I forget to reset the allowed document type.

Would you mind trying again? it should allow .dot and .doc file types now.

Let's give it a try. I think everything worked. I hope these help folks. There is no reason for everyone to have to re-invent the square wheel.

MK4013-F1.doc

Validation of Tube Transport of Blood blank form.doc

MK4013v2- Issuing Blood via Tube.doc

We have just finished validating and are now compiling all that data.

We also ran Lab tests on pre and post samples.

Cryo, FFP tested for factors I , VIII,

Plt - Plt Count,

RBC - Hgb Hct RBC Morphology, Na, K, RBC Oxyhemoglobin, carboxyhemoglogin, methemoglobin

Hello John,

I tried to open your documents for validating the pneumatic tube for sending blood products, but was unable to. We are hoping to start using our Translogic CTS30 to transport blood products and would love to have the information. Would you be willing to send the attachments to me in an email? Hopefully I will have better luck trying to open them.

Thanks very much.

Gail Sharpe

Transfusion Safety Officer

Health Science Centre

St. John's, Newfoundland

Canada

gail.sharpe@hccsj.nl.ca

Sorry about that Gail. You should be able to open them now.

Hello John,

I tried to open your documents for validating the pneumatic tube for sending blood products, but was unable to.

I think the AABB (www.aabb.org) has a publication on validation of pneumatic tube systems as blood delivery devices, but the site is down right now and I can't look it up.

Let's give it a try. I think everything worked. I hope these help folks. There is no reason for everyone to have to re-invent the square wheel.

John,

I will be using a Translogic system for moving blood around our facility once we relocate to our new lab during the 4th quarter. I was unable to download your procedures for validation/tube request forms/tubing blood products. Would you be willing to share them with via direct email? My address is mwilde@memorialsb.org.

Thanks in advance!

I was reading through your response and wondered if you could email me the validation procedures for the pneumatic tube system as well. I am in much the same condition. We have never tubed blood to any of the units. My email is dcampbell@augustahealth.com. Thanks.