Ensuring Adequate Blood Supplies for Victims of Combat-Related Trauma
By Barbara Lock, MDNovember 07, 2009
After the Fort Hood Massacre, officials at the local Kileen, Texas hospital Scott and White Healthcare sent out a plea for blood donation. Area residents responded in droves, and the need was met, with blood to spare. Because the shelf-life of donated blood is only six weeks, additional potential donors were encouraged to delay blood donation until later in the year, so that fresh supplies would be available during the holidays.
Having an adequate supply of blood for transfusion in trauma or surgical patients is an ongoing concern for hospitals everywhere, but especially for the military. When blood supplies are low or difficult to store and transport, as happens on front lines in warfare, the options for replenishing that supply are limited. While healthcare workers can appeal for blood donation from the local population, there are necessary delays involved in collecting, typing and processing that blood to ensure the health and safety of the recipient. A person who receives an incompatible blood type in transfusion will have a life-threatening reaction.
Donated blood is almost always processed into its components, including red blood cells, plasma, and platelets. But warm, fresh, whole blood that has not been processed into different products contributes to immediate and short term survival, when transfused into combat-related trauma patients, compared to component therapy, according to Spinella et al.
To help ensure in-theater fresh blood supplies, researchers from the Navy Medical Research Center Detachment-Great Lakes investigated the stability of the Eldon Home Kit 2511, a commercially available blood typing kit, when exposed to various weather conditions. Unfortunately, the kits were rendered unusable, or worse, produced an incorrect result, in several scenarios of extreme enviroment.
Shelf-stable blood substitutes based on the oxygen-carrying molecule hemoglobin were once thought to carry signficant promise for the transfusion of trauma patients, but a metaanalysis of studies of these products revealed that they are associated with a significantly higher risk of death and myocardial infarction than real blood. But they are probably better than nothing, when nothing is the only other option.
Please read our legal disclaimer.
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
Bookmark with:
What are these?