19 October 2018 (Friday) - Doping

Having just seen that there’s not a lot of difference clinically between administering older or fresher blood clinically wouldn’t seem to be news. It turns out athletes have been doing it for some time.

Apparently they take off a unit (or so) of blood and transfuse it back just before some competition or other because this is an undetectable form of doping.

No longer undetectable…

I wonder if there’s any applications of this that I might be using in the not too distant future?

19 October 2018 (Friday) - Transfusion Evidence Alert

The Transfusion Evidence Alert email arrived today. This is one of my better sources of CPD. There was quite a bit of interest today. I was particularly intrigued by a study into the effect of age of transfused blood on patient outcome.

In burn victims there wouldn’t seem to be much of a problem in giving older blood rather than fresher blood. That’s probably for the best; if the fresher blood is demonstrably better than should we be giving the older stuff at all?

18 October 2018 (Thursday) - CLL Case Study

Here’s a case study form the nice people at Lablogatory. All about CLL. Nothing overly complicated; nothing obscure. A rather good case study.

I particularly liked the flow cytometry data; I can’t pretend to be an expert on that stuff so stuff like this is a godsend.

18 October 2018 (Thursday) - Stem Cell Evidence Alert

The nice people at NHS Blood and Transplant have started up a “Stem Cell Evidence Alert”. Unlike some sources of CPD which are of peripheral interest, this one (hopefully) will be more directly relevant to me.

So far, so good…

18 October 2018 (Thursday) - The Oncologist Newsletter

The nice people at The Oncologist sent their email update today. I won’t lie – I skimmed it. Like much of my CPD this was really only of peripheral interest… but still of interest.

16 October 2018 (Tuesday) - The Oncologist Newsletter

The Oncologist Newsletter appeared in my in-box this morning. As always it is rather useful. There was one article about daratumumab which was interesting; confirming the efficacity of the stuff.

Something of a nuisance for us in the lab… but if the treatment works…

16 October 2018 (Tuesday) - Transfusion News email

The Transfusion News email appeared in my in-box this morning. As always, an invaluable source of C.P.D.

Increased Risk of Myocardial Ischemia and Death in Severely Anemic Patients who Decline Transfusions

October 10, 2018 Increased cardiac output can aid oxygen delivery in patients with mild anemia. When a critical hemoglobin (Hb) concentration is reached and oxygen delivery is at capacity, more severe anemia can lead to tissue ischemia, organ failure, myocardial infarction, and even death. Little data on the critical hemoglobin threshold is available for [Read More]

Transfusion and Blood Clots with Ruchika Goel

October 3, 2018 | BBGuy Podcast Venous thromboembolism is a major cause of death after surgery, and for decades, our focus has been on inflammatory states, “stagnant” blood in the legs, and hypercoagulation. But have we been missing another major factor: Red blood cell transfusion? Dr. Ruchika Goel discusses her very important article in JAMA Surgery. [Listen Now]

Blood Collection and Processing Methods Affect Inflammatory Response in Vitro

October 3, 2018 Numerous studies have examined whether storage time affects the safety and quality of red blood cells (RBCs), but few studies have taken into account the collection and processing methods which may confound these results. In order to investigate differences [Read More]