Fatal intravascular hemolysis induced by platelet concentrate

Quality systems in automated plateletpheresis in hospital-based blood transfusion service in north India

The issues of providing quality blood products and maintaining donor safety are primary aims of blood transfusion services. A comprehensive quality system should be in place to fulfill these aims, which can be attained through strict adherence to the established standard operating procedures (SOPs). The Drugs and Cosmetics Act of India, which controls the licensing of blood transfusion services, does not provide clear guidelines regarding plateletpheresis procedure. We, therefore, established our own SOP and operational flow chart for plateletpheresis that can be easily followed by other centers in India. A total of 100 plateletpheresis procedures performed using two cell separators (CS3000 Baxter Healthcare, Round Lake, IL; MCS3p, Haemonetics Corporation, Braintree, MA) were evaluated following our established SOP. The mean platelet yield in CS3000 was 2.9 +/- 0.84 x 10(11) and in MCS3p it was 2.88 +/- 0.75 x 10(11)per unit. However, only 4-7% of SDPs showed WBC levels <5 x 10(6) due to lack of appropriate methods to quantitate residual WBC counts. Six of 100 donors complained of hypocalcemic symptoms. The operational flow chart designed in this study was found to be simple and easy to adapt by blood transfusion services in this country.

Significant numbers of apheresis-derived group O platelet units have "high-titer" anti-A/A,B: implications for transfusion policy

Transfusion of group O single-donor apheresis PLTs (SDP) to group A recipients has resulted in intravascular hemolysis and mortality. Owing to low availability of type-specific SDPs, transfusion services sometimes issue ABO-mismatched PLTs. After observing two cases of acute hemolysis following infusion of O SDPs to group A patients, where both recipient eluates revealed anti-A specificity, a prospective study to determine the prevalence of "high-titer" anti-A/A,B in group O SDPs was commenced. One hundred group O SDP samples were tested. Titers of at least 64 and/or 256 from either buffered (generally reflective of IgM antibodies) or anti-IgG gel cards, respectively, were considered critically high. Twenty-eight and 39 percent of samples revealed critically high anti-A/A,B IgM and IgG titers, respectively. IgM titers were at 1:64 (18%), 128 (6%), and 256 (4%), whereas IgG titers were at 1:256 (28%), 512 (7%), 1024 (2%), and 2048 (2%). The prevalence of critical anti-A/A,B titers in group O SDPs is relatively high. Thus, the risk of minor side ABO mismatch and potential intravascular hemolysis during group O SDP transfusion to group A recipients may be significant. Based on these data, a policy was instituted to test anti-A/A,B titers in O SDPs prior to "out-of-group" transfusion.