Sysmex Transfusion Webinar Series 2: Quality Management in Blood Bank
Speaker
Dr Richard Blanco, PHD
Principal Component Development Scientist, Component Development Laboratory (CDL), NHS Blood and Transplant, Cambridge.
Objectives of the Lecture
Several dictionaries define quality as “the degree to which a product or service meets requirements.” Blood centers, hospital blood banks, and transfusion services needs to provide quality in many forms, including:
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- Safe, satisfying donation experiences for blood donors.
- Accurately labeled and tested blood components provided to transfusion services.
- Safe and efficacious blood transfusions without WBC or RBC contaminants to patients who require these special products.
- In this webinar, we draw on the experience of a transfusion expert, Dr Richard Blanco from NHS Blood and Transplant UK on the Quality Management process & the development of a new software algorithm to improve QC of residual cells blood product QC testing.
Abstract of Lecture
European guidelines require ongoing monitoring of residual white blood cells (rWBC) in leucodepleted (LD) blood components, and residual red blood cells (rRBC) in non-RBC components. Although rWBCs can be quality monitored (QM) using flow cytometry, currently there are no widely accepted methods to accurately and consistently measure levels of rRBCs in blood components. Sysmex have developed a novel software algorithm, termed the Blood Bank (BB) mode, designed to quantitate the levels of residual cells in processed blood components.
We show from various multi-site evaluations that Sysmex haematology analysers loaded with BB mode software demonstrated acceptable performance characteristics for enumeration of both rWBC and rRBCs. The adoption of a single platform for the measurement of both haematology and residual cell QM parameters could provide both time and cost saving benefits for national blood services.