Blood Bank Guy Essentials Podcast

Every now and then, the routine practice of Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine gets intimidating. A difficult patient situation arises here, an impossible choice looms there. What do you do when there are no easy answers? Drs Mark Fung and Jay Hudgins are expert Transfusion Medicine practitioners who have years of experience dealing with these "scary" situations! In this special Halloween 2020 episode, they are here to help learners with ideas on how to approach some seemingly impossible situations.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

Every now and then, when a transfusion service does a pretransfusion workup, they find that the patient's plasma is incompatible with EVERY other red cell! In other words, NOTHING is compatible! These situations are intimidating, and can lead to delays in transfusion. Dr. Jill Storry is an international immunohematology expert, and she shares practical tips for what to do and how to recognize the three main patterns of panagglutinins.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

Special episode! In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, does convalescent plasma from recovered patients offer fresh hope for those who are critically ill? The medical leaders of the two largest blood collectors in the US are here to help us work through the challenges and triumphs for COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

Let's be honest: Some hospital transfusion committee meetings feel like a waste of time! However, Dr. Carolyn Burns thinks transfusion committees are not hopeless! In this interview, she outlines her practical steps for building the perfect transfusion committee. She discusses how to recruit members, how to find "champions," what to discuss and analyze, and shares what she has observed in the most effective transfusion committees. Whether your facility is doing a great job already or you are reading this and thinking, "I'm supposed to be reviewing transfusion stuff?", Carolyn will help you go beyond just "checking the boxes."

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

In this emergency episode, recorded on March 16, 2020, I discuss actions blood collectors and hospitals should be thinking of now to preserve the US blood supply, as well as a look at the global COVID-19 pandemic. We also briefly discuss convalescent plasma and its potential role.

The 32nd edition of AABB Standards became effective in April 2020. Rich Gammon, Chair of the BBTS Standards Committee, is here with the Top 10 changes you need to know! From blood donors to recipients, these changes will keep you in touch with best practices in Transfusion Medicine, even if your facility is not AABB-accredited.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

Those who oversee blood collection organizations wrestle constantly with two questions: "How can I keep my blood donors safe?" and "How can I keep the recipients of the blood we are collecting safe?" These twin responsibilities shape decisions and policies in blood donor centers worldwide. Dr. Mindy Goldman, Medical Director at Canadian Blood Services (CBS), is deeply involved in the evaluation of those core questions. As a result, I wanted her to describe Canada's decisions on two big issues: First, whether to impose an upper age limit on blood donors, and second, how long to defer men from blood donation who have had intimate contact with other men.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

With the FDA's 2019 publication of their Final Guidance on how to prevent patients from receiving platelet products contaminated with bacteria, it finally feels like pathogen reduction technology is about to "get real" in the United States! There was a time, though, that modern versions of pathogen reduction existed only in the minds of some really, really smart people. One of those brilliant minds is my guest, and his name is Dr. Ray Goodrich. Ray shares the backstory of how modern pathogen reduction techniques came to be.

Far too many platelet transfusion decisions are made by evaluating a single laboratory value (the platelet count). Dr. Joe Sweeney believes we need more information to make better choices. Platelet transfusion decisions can be complex, and there is wide practice variability both within institutions and among different subspecialty services. In this interview, Dr. Sweeney describes current platelet transfusion guidelines and a more thorough approach to caring for thrombocytopenic patients.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.

On September 30, 2019, the United States Food and Drug Administration released the long awaited final guidance on bacterial risk control in platelets (see episode 076 for more details). One way that transfusion services can fulfill the recommendations in the guidance is to implement pathogen reduction technology. Dr. Pat Kopko and her team at the University of California-San Diego are well ahead of the curve, as they implemented PR-platelets in their hospital WAY back in 2017! Along the way, UCSD and their blood supplier (American Red Cross) had to answer many difficult questions and make many decisions. Pat joins me to describe lessons learned, with an eye toward where this all fits with the FDA guidance.

Continuing education for this episode has EXPIRED. See BBGuy.org/CE or AABB.org/BBGuy for current CE-eligible episodes.