Another thread on pneumatic tubes used to issue blood!  Sorry, but I couldn't find what I was looking for searching the other threads.

 

My Facilities department manager is reluctant to allow us to explore the idea of issuing blood via tube system.  I need contacts--preferably in Facilities Depts--that I can provide him so he has a realistic idea of the frequency of unit breakage in the tube system.  We have a Swisslog system.  If anyone is willing to share a contact person at your facility please either send me a private message or answer here that you are willing and I will message you.  Or you can just post their contact info if you don't think they will mind.

 

Thanks for any help!

We have been issuing blood by pneumatic tube for over 2 years and have had 1 unit break.  Since we send everything in a sealed ziplock bag, it was all contained and no decontamination of the system was required.

pbaker, do you issue a lot of blood per year?  We give about 5000 units of RBCs per year here.  At my old place we issued about 3000 RBCs per year mostly via tube for 10 years without any units breaking.  That was a Translogic system.

We have been tubing blood products for many years (10 or more) and have never had any breakage. Our hospital uses a SwissLog system. We use the large tubes with padding in each side of the tube. The unit then goes in a zipper pouch, and that goes in the padded tube. Zipper pouches and foam padding were obtained thru SwissLog.

Susan.

We issue about 3500 red cells per year.  We also have Swiss Log, but use no padding

So far this month we have tubed 670 units, so around 8000 a year give or take.

We have used Swisslog to issue blood products to the floors and have never had a bag break in over 12 years.  We do use 2 ziplock bags to contain the unit and foam inserts in the pneumatic tubes.  We issue over 14,000 units a year.

We've shipped blood, double-bagged, via 2 different tube systems for 20 years with no breakage. I would think that centrifuging the bags during processing puts substantially more stress on them than tubing in a padded bullet.

Do you have any concerns with using a pneumatic system for blood products and it arriving as a safe product

Do you have any concerns with using a pneumatic system for blood products and it arriving as a safe product 

We are about to go live with a new p-tube system and we have done temperature studies to all of the stations to show that there are no hotspots.  Is there anything else you are concerned about as a "safe product"?

When we started transporting blood in the pneumatic tube we did a validation. We used an expired unit of red cells, drew a tube from it and did a CBC and spun it to look for hemolysis. We timed how long it took from Blood Bank from our two furthest stations (it was amazingly fast, less than a minute). We looked for any problems with leakage, etc (none). We sent it on multiple trips around the hospital. Then at the end we did another CBC and spun it again (same results, no hemolysis). So we were confident that it was safe. It was already established practice at other hospitals.

Always wondered though about platelets and if the function is compromised at all; really no way to know.

The only thing we don't send by pneumatic tube is our tissues; no data on whether it is safe or not. So we hand deliver them.

We don't tube platelets or any "special" products that are required for the patient (e.g. antigen-negative for patients who require it, irradiated, etc). We're not worried about damage to the product, we're worried about those very rare times a pneumatic tube gets jammed somewhere and a hard to replace (and/or) expensive product is ruined and significantly delays a patient's transfusion.

We used the AABB guide to validation of pneumatic tubes for transporting blood. We send our tubes by "secure send" which means they have priority and are tracked. When they arrive at their destination, they don't drop down into the bay, but stay up and an alarm sounds. The alarm doesn't turn off until the four digit secure code is entered, then the tube drops down. Our system is a Translogic system. Our nurses request blood by tubing down the unit ready slip, so they are expecting to see the unit shortly.

That alarm is a great feature. We don't have it and have to call, and we have wasted more than a few units over the years. The best was when we sent a unit to the OR and it sat in the tube station 3 days over a long weekend.

We also have Translogic/Swisslog and have an auto-return feature we are going to use with the secure send feature.  The nurses must scan their badge to get the carrier to release.  If no one scans their badge in 10 minutes, the carrier will return to the blood bank.  Of course this all sounds great but we have not been able to use it yet.  We moved into our new hospital over a month ago and Swisslog is still unable to work out all of the bugs.  Until it is smooth sailing we are afraid to put blood products in the system.

We use a form to request blood to be released from the blood bank for transfusion.

 

When blood is issued through the tube system we make a copy of the request form, send the original with the blood, and set a 15minute timer. If the timer goes off before the form is returned we call the nursing unit to ensure it's arrived/they pick it up.

 

I don't believe our tube system has all the fancy bells and whistles like the ones I've seen described here.

We also just use one certain tube to send blood.  It is a different color than all the other ones we have.  So if we don't get it back it's obvious and we keep the unit ready slip so we know where we sent it.  At times I have gotten a request for a unit and had to call another location to ask for them to return the tube, but I think having our own tube that we keep in blood bank helps us keep track.  Our tube system is not in blood bank, but I expect it may be with other hospitals.

Ooh you reminded me molly, we do that here as well.

 

We're the only ones who use blue pneumatic tubes, they're labeled for blood bank, and they have padding inserts.