8 July 2022 (Friday) - Transfusion News Update

Are WHO Guidelines for Serum Ferritin Levels for Female Blood Donors Too Low?

July 6, 2022 The current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, based on expert opinion with low-grade evidence, define iron deficiency in healthy blood donors to be <15 mg/L serum ferritin. A new study recently published developed a method to physiologically identify serum ferritin thresholds for iron deficiency in women. Serum ferritin concentrations usually correlate with total body iron stores. [Read More]

Educational Materials Help to Retain Donors after a Temporary Deferral

June 29, 2022 Previous studies have found that temporarily deferred donors sometimes believe that their deferral is permanent. In order to determine whether educational materials prompt temporarily deferred donors to return to donate blood, researchers in Australia randomized 30 blood donation centers to three arms: i) in-center brochure explaining the common reasons for temporary deferral plus an email thanking donors and reminding them to return to donate within seven days of the deferral, ii) email only, or iii) standard intervention. [Read More]

Acute Normovolemic Hemodilution (ANH) with Steve Frank

June 29, 2022 | BBGuy Podcast CE episode! Acute Normovolemic Hemodilution has a funny name and a shortage of data to support its use. Dr. Steve Frank shows us why it could be a great tool to reduce allogeneic red cell transfusion! [Listen Now]