20 January 2023 (Friday) - Transfusion News Update

The nice people at Transfusion News sent their update today… convalescent plasma *is* worth having… this week.

 

Plasmapheresis Associated with Reduced Mortality Among Patients with Severe COVID-19

January 18, 2023 Over 6 million people have died due to COVID-19 worldwide since the start of the pandemic. Several comorbidities are associated with COVID-19 disease severity, such as older age, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other conditions that weaken the immune system. [Read more]

RESTORE Trial (REcovery and Survival of Stem cell Originated Rd cells)

Join Transfusion News Associate Editors Daniela Hermelin and Monica Pagano on Twitter Space this Friday January 20 at 11:00 AM ET for a #Blooducation Baristas live event. They will discuss the RESTORE Trial along with lead investigators Cedric Ghevaert, Ash Toye and Rebecca Cardigan. [Set a reminder to join us]

COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Improves Outcomes for Cancer Patients

January 10, 2023 Standard COVID-19 therapies and vaccines have limited effectiveness in patients with impaired humoral immune responses, and these patients have a high risk of severe COVID-19. High titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) used early in the disease has been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization among immunocompetent outpatients. [Read more]

19 January 2023 (Thursday) - Red Cell Morphology

 

I did the red cell morphology section today. I found it incredibly useful. A revision of what I already knew, and in a couple of instances I fund that coming from a different perspective I learned a thing or two as well.

Plus I got a couple of links – I didn’t realise this was freely available

17 January 2023 (Tuesday) - Westgard QC Newletter

The Westgard QC newsletter appeared in my in-box today. I’ve got a degree in maths and still find it hard going in places, but one article made me think… The ISO standards insist we must have measurements of the degree of uncertainty for our analytes, but is rather more vague as to what we do with those figures.

 

CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments) and EFLM (European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine) goals have been set, and the nice people at Westgard have applied their goals to several Haematology analysers… you can see the paper by clicking here.

 

Oh dear…

“The new era of goals for hematology appears ominous. If the three dominant benchmarks deliver an unacceptable verdict of a leading hematology instrument, what are we to conclude? Are the instruments fundamentally flawed, or the goals themselves?”

I wonder where this is going to go…