So I remember a friend having this really large bruise on her elbow pit. Apparently she donated blood but the nurse said her vessel popped so the needle had to be removed. She was informed the blood can’t be used for donation and would have to be discarded because it wasn’t completely filled up. Even tho it wasn’t full, the bag had lines to measure the amount of blood, so why?
In: 6722
I’m not sure which country you’re in, but in Australia it wouldn’t be discarded.
Even if there’s not enough blood to make up a standard “unit” for transfusion, it can still be used for research, training purposes or calibration of lab equipment. It would certainly not be wasted.
So that the person receiving the blood gets a full unit. You can’t mix more than one donation together.
In the UK, they keep the blood to do research with so it’s not a complete waste.
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Blood bags are pre-filled with chemicals to prevent clots and extend the shelf life (most commonly CPDA). These also affect the acidity of the blood. The amount is calculated assuming the bag is filled to a certain volume.
These remain in the blood when it is transfused, so if you used a bunch of partial bags instead to transfuse someone, you would be transfusing them with a bunch of excess anticoagulatant and also messing with their pH. Since they are presumably sick enough or bleeding enough to need a transfusion, they might not be able to handle this.
Elbow pit? I’ve never heard that before. I love it.
So if the needle pops out of this vein, why can another needle/vein with the same bag be used? Or is it one of those premanufactured things? This is what I interpreted OP’s post to mean.
Since we are talking about giving blood. I donate quite often and would like to know how the hospital goes from getting a product for free to charging you 1,000 dollars a unit when you need it back. I have been in their collection centers and rent payroll and equipment is not that much.
I donate when I can and have never had a problem (always my right arm). In fact, I’ve normally filled the blood and left before people who sat down before me have even filled the bag. But the last two attempts have failed. 😔 The first one barely got started as the blood stopped flowing into the needle (it may have fallen out of the vein, or wasn’t inserted properly) and the second one filled the bag to just under what they’d call ‘full’ before something happened and, once again, the blood stopped flowing. I was told that this second ‘failure’ bag would be used in laboratories for their experiments/tests. I’m going to give it a go with the other arm at my next donation and hopefully it’ll work but my left arm’s veins don’t like playing ball and usually disappear into the depths of my arm 🤷🏼♀️
Here in my country it would not be wasted, the blood is separated into many parts, like plasma, witch basically the ‘water’ of the blood, red blood cells concentrate and white cells concentrate, and these are used into different situations
Like for blood loss it would be a volume of plasma, for anemy would be red blood cells, and for some other specific disease, the white blood cells
And even in a last case where you could not use it for tranfusion, it would be used for research
The top comment about how it has to do with the preservatives used per bag is certainly the real answer but small bags would also make administering them really irritating and much more time consuming. The accrediting organizations for hospitals and groups that create transfusion protocols have rather strict rules.
There are rules about how much time you have for certain parts of the administration, frequent dual sign offs with another trained person at multiple points, rules about frequency of vital signs and physical assessments, a portion when you can’t leave the room, and the documentation is rather technical and frequently audited. The whole process is repeated for each bag, though there I believe are policies called mass transfusion protocols in my area where the rules are more relaxed because it’s generally a massive trauma/life or death situation . Having to do this twice to administer two units of blood (approximately 640-700ml?) is time consuming on its own, having to do this multiple times to give the patient the same amount of blood would be suboptimal.
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