We are currently building a new hospital that will have a pneumatic tube systems. However, I am one of the only people who have used an pneumatic. Some of the employees recently visited another hospital and said that they do not use the pneumatic tube system to send any blood or blood products through the system because it is too much to validate. Has anyone validated a pneumatic tube system before and would be able to help me out with how they did it. The other hospital is seeming to make a bigger deal then necessary with the validation (i.e. platelet concentration levels after being tubed, hemolysis, ect.) Any help would be appreciated.

We transport blood via pneumatic tube system for emergencies only. We have a procedure for doing so and it includes a form that must be sent with the unit, completed by the receiving staff and sent back to the blood bank.

I cannot find where any validation was done. However, a case study was done by the pneumatic tube manufacturer (not sure if this can be considered validation since it was not done in our facility).

In a previous blood bank where I worked, we tubed blood to the OR routinely without incidence.

The AABB has a guideline available for purchase that might answer some of your questions and give you a start. Guidelines for Pneumatic Tube Delivery Systems: Validation and Use to Transport Blood Components

[item 053045].

Thanks for the info. I have ordered the AABB guidelines, and we are still in the process of sorting everything out.

If you look through some older posts here you will find more than a few dealing with tubing blood products. You might also find some of the information in these posts useful. Bottom line, lots of places are doing with no problems, there is no reason you can't. My staff were thrilled when we moved into the new hospital and started tubing blood products. The validation really isn't that bad, especially if you are motivated to make it work.

Hi,

Last year at the AABB I gave a talk on how to validate and then monitor a pneumatic tube system. I will give you my email and if you like I can email you the powerpoint slides and give you our validation forms to use for modify. Just email me and let me know. I did purchase the AABB guidelines which were very helpful and based much of my decisions and validation from the guidelines. We built a new ER and with it a pneumatic tube system for lab specimens, because of the distance they requested that blood products be tubed also. Here is my email cterrano@chsbuffalo.org

Check under the quality forum on page 5, there is information and a validation protocol.