Blood safetyat what cost? [Editorial]
This editorial summarizes in a very concise way all the various aspects arising from the article of Heyns et al in the same issue of the journal. – Volker Kretschmer
Prevalence of HIV-1 in blood donations following implementation of a structured blood safety policy in South Africa.
A really interesting article about improvement of blood safety that everybody being active in this field should read. It shows the complexity of this subject: the prevalence of HIV infections depends on many factors that may relate to culture and socioeconomic status and may considerably differ between different countries, and therefore generalization is difficult. It […]
The risk associated with aprotinin in cardiac surgery.
To read the commentary by Dean A. Fergusson, MHA, PhD, from the University of Ottawa Centre for Transfusion Research, please click here. See also the comment by Robert J. Porte, MD, PhD, Department of Surgery, Section Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, and Herman G.D. Hendriks, MD, PhD, Department of Anesthesiology, University Medical Center Groningen, The […]
The reporting of theoretical health risks by the media: Canadian newspaper reporting of potential blood transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Very interesting paper showing how the newspapers influence the public. – Volker Kretschmer
Perspective: emerging infections, transfusion safety, and epidemiology.
Quite nice comment on the article by Pealer and colleagues, and on the way West Nile Virus was handled in the US. – Volker Kretschmer
Salmonella sepsis caused by a platelet transfusion from a donor with a pet snake.
This article is interesting but the authors’ conclusion fails to satisfy. Both the donor and his daughter suffered from diarrhea 2 to 3 weeks before donation and were successfully treated with antibiotics. Blood donation was thus unacceptable. One should conclude that donors having suffered from unclear diarrhea for 3 to 4 weeks (not donors having […]
Perioperative blood salvage as an alternative to predonating blood for primary total knee and hip arthroplasty.
This retrospective study shows again that intra- and postoperative blood salvage can minimize allogeneic transfusions. For the recent discussion about the use of unwashed drainage blood the paper is remarkable in demonstrating that cell washing is feasible. The cost analysis is (as usual) limited to a specific situation, as the cell sever costs are high […]
Bacterial contamination of blood products: Factors, options, and insights.
Very good paper providing an excellent review on bacterial risk. However, data from Europe are not included (e.g., England’s “SHOT” study). In addition, undetected leakage of the more and more complicated multiple bag systems for universal inline filtration is not mentioned. – V. Kretschmer.
