DONATE WHOLE BLOOD OR PLATELETS

The importance of blood donations in life-threatening situations like accidents, cancer, organ transplants and heart surgeries cannot be denied. But have you ever wondered why we just cannot donate a part of blood, for example, RBCs or blood platelets only instead of whole blood. It is well known that in cases of Dengue it is the platelets count in the patient that goes down and the patients recovers as soon he is transfused with fresh blood platelets from a matching donor. In such a scenario it makes sense to just do a transfusion of platelets to such patients instead of using the whole blood thereby saving some vital blood components.

Recently a technology called “Pheresis” or “Apheresis” has enthused the hematologists of the world. “Plasmapheresis” means plasma seperatiopn from whole blood. Other components can be seperated by plateletpheresis, leukapheresis. This technique is a special kind of blood donation where, for example, platelet or a single blood component is separated by a machine and the rest blood is returned to the donor’s body.

People are being encouraged to donate blood components with availability of such technologies. The process itself is done in a relaxed atmosphere where the donor watches movies and reads to relax while donating. The donor by giving just platelets is able to recover fast – within a couple of days. Platelets can be taken about 24 times in a year by a single donor whereas same donor can donate whole blood once in three months only as it takes longer to replace. Exposing a patient to 6 to 8 whole blood donors is also risky. Therefore apheresis minimizes the risk to the patient by exposing him to a single donor.