Evaluating the role of blood collection centers in public health: a status report.

Blood centers have a central role in the community through recruitment and donation, and these community interactions enable blood centers to have a critical role in public health. Some public health initiatives are inherent in the blood center, such as providing human immunodeficiency virus educational material, whereas other initiatives have been actively created, such as cardiovascular screening, as a means to increase blood donor rates and increase the blood center's community interaction. These public health initiatives have been inconsistently practiced by blood collection centers over many years.

Pathophysiology of early trauma-induced coagulopathy: emerging evidence for hemodilution and coagulation factor depletion.

Background: Trauma patients present with a coagulopathy, termed early trauma-induced coagulopathy (ETIC), that is associated with increased mortality. This study investigated hemostatic changes responsible for ETIC.

Methods: Case-control study of trauma patients with and without ETIC, defined as prolonged prothrombin time (PT), was performed from prospective cohort of consecutive trauma patients who presented to Level I trauma center.

Transfusion-related acute lung injury: from bedside to bench and back.

Over the past 60 years, the transfusion medicine community has attained significant knowledge regarding transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) through the bedside to bench and back to the bedside model. First, at the bedside, TRALI causes hypoxia and noncardiogenic pulmonary edema, typically within 6 hours of transfusion. Second, bedside studies showed a higher incidence in plasma and platelet products than in red blood cell products (the fatal TRALI incidence for plasma is 1:2-300 000 products; platelet, 1:3-400 000; red blood cells, 1:25 002 000), as well as an association with donor leukocyte antibodies (∼ 80% of cases).

Minority donation in the United States: challenges and needs.

Purpose Of Review: In the United States, blood donation rates of African-Americans are 25-50% of that of white individuals. As African-Americans make up an ever increasing and now substantial minority, and African-American recipients of blood transfusion, both specialized, such as sickle cell disease patients, and general hospitalized patients, have a better chance of receiving phenotype-matched or appropriate red blood cell units when there is a significant percentage of products in the inventory from African-American donors, it is important to understand the reason for the observed difference.

Recent Findings: Possible reasons for this discrepancy in donation rates include increased rates of donor deferral and ineligibility; increased barriers to donation, such as fear and distrust; and different marketing and education strategies.