TraQ Program of the BC PBCO

What's New - September 2017 (By topic)

Also see What's new - chronological | What's new - Archives

General News | Specific countries | Diseases | Industry News | Resource Library | Journals
Collaborating Sites: CSTM
NEW TraQ's August newsletter

General

• Latest blog by Eric Ching: Mix and Match - High Incidence Antigens (Fun Quiz)
• Why Canada needs USA sperm [and plasma] (13 Sept. 2017) | More from Peter Jaworski, who co-authored, 'Markets Without Limits', the primary thesis of which is, "anything you may permissibly do for free, you may permissibly do for money."
  • For interest, background of importing sperm on Canada from foreign sperm banks:
    • He was the perfect sperm donor. Then 26 families found out he wasn’t (9 Apr. 2016)
    • Shortage of Canadian sperm is not about men being unwilling to donate without pay (9 Apr. 2016)
    • Canada’s largest importer of donor sperm repeatedly imported semen from foreign sperm banks that was not fully screened for infectious diseases, including HIV (28 Nov. 2016)
  • Canada: CBS International Symposium: RBCs: Still Vital After All These Years? (Sept 9, 2017, Toronto, ON)

Canada

• BC PBCO job opportunities:
  • Provincial Director, BC Provincial Blood Coordinating Office
  • Clinical Coordinator, Quality and Utilization Management
• BC PBCO/CBS: 17th Annual Education Session on Blood Transfusion Issues (28 Sept. 2017, Kamloops BC)
• 14-yr-old Jehovah's Witness forced to receive blood transfusion (21 Sept. 2017)
• CBS: Upcoming educational events
• Also see Diseases below (BC WNV update)

Australia

• Fifty years, two million babies: Australia's role in a remarkable medical success story (8 Sept. 2017) Background:
  • 1980: Australian Dr. John Gorman and 4 others honoured with prestigious Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award for their work on the vaccine for preventing Rh incompatibility in newborns (Rh immune globulin)

China/Hong Kong

• Hong Kong: MSM lifetime ban changes on 25 Sept. to donation allowed if no MSM for one year (15 Sept. 2017)
  • Don’t donate blood if you’re gay – they don't deserve your help (Oped, 16 Sept. 2017)
• Blood agents jailed over cash for transfusions scam (3 Sept. 2017) | Underground trade targeted patients whose surgerydelayed because of shortages in public blood banks. Background:
  • Illegal trade in donated blood on rise amid shortage of supplies from donors, says report (26 Apr. 2016)
  • Children of Chinese blood donors offered grades boost as incentive (24 Sept. 2014)

India

• Patient dies from from DIC and multi-organ failure after nursing orderly transfuses platelets without doctor’s order patient consent (23 Sept. 2017) | Hard to discern what happened
• Kerala State AIDS Control Society initiated inspection of 172 blood banks but experts say they're meaningless (20 Sept. 2017)
• Kerala AIDS Society grants 'clean chit' to Regional Cancer Centre (19 Sept. 2017)
  • Call to make NAT mandatory for reducing risks in blood transfusion (18 Sept. 2017)
  • Kerala: 9 year-old tests HIV+ after transfusion (16 Sept. 2017) | Blood donation during window period suspected as donors not screened by NAT in Kerala
• Nurses, medical attendants need to learn safe use of blood (16 Sept. 2017) | Examples cited of blood warmed in sunlight and unlabelled blood sent from blood bank
• Reports are false that 8 patients died due to alleged transfusion of expired blood (12 Sept. 2017)
  • 8 Die in Bihar Hospital after transfused with 'expired blood' (8 Sept. 2017)

Ireland

• IBTS Assistant Director of Nursing takes case to High Court to prevent sacking (12 Sept. 2017) | IBTS says she engaged in gross insubordination by refusing to apologise to staff
  • 'Because a donor’s gender will have an impact on how donated blood is used for patients, changing that gender may have safety implication for recipients.'
• IBTS working on solution for how to deal with transgender donors(4 Sept. 2017)
• IBTS Medical Director abruptly ends phone call after asked about why transfusion-related hepatitis B case occurring in Jan. 2017 not made public sooner (31 Aug. 2017)
  • Patient contracts hepatitis B from transfusion (30 Aug. 2017) | Donor tested in window period. IBTS calls it a rare, 1-in-2 million event

South Africa

• Durban man sues blood service after contracting terminal disease (19 Sept. 2017) | SANBS does not test donor blood for HTLV-1

UK

• Man who received Great North Air Ambulance's first plasma transfusion makes miraculous recovery (22 Sept. 2017)
• Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance now carries blood on ‘Ambucopter’, can undertake on-site transfusions (20 Sept. 2017)
• Also see Journals below (BBTS Annual Meeting)

Industry news

• To be announced

Diseases in the news

• HBV: See Ireland above
• WNV (Canada): CBS, BC & Yukon Region, WNV Update (28 Aug. 2017)

Resource Library / Links

• Canada (via BC PBCO): CBS, BC & Yukon Region, WNV Update (28 Aug. 2017)
• BC PBCO update to Technical Operations Manual (TOM)
  • TMP0002: Blood Product Inventory Assessment, Order and Receipt
  • AOR 0004: Receiving Blood Products from CBS (v 2.0)
  • AOR 0014: Receiving and Issuing Untested or Incompletely Tested Blood Components from Canadian Blood Services (v 1.0)
  • TMP0014: Pretransfusion Examination
  • PTE 0017: Managing Transfusion Requests of Patients on Daratumumab Therapy (v 1.0)
• Canada: CBS-sponsored LearnTransfusion series
  • ORBCon 2017 webcast schedule
• NEW TraQ's August newsletter
• NEW TM blog: We are the world (Musings on the humanitarianism of selling body tissues)
  • July blog: Both sides now (Musings on where careers take us)

Journals, etc.

Free full text papers | * 1 or more Canadian authors

Free sample issues (Jan. 2016 unless indicated otherwise)

Seminars in Hematology (Features Hemophilia) | Transfusion (AABB) | Transfusion Medicine (BBTS, Jan. 2015)

Transfusion Medicine Reviews | Vox sanguinis (ISBT) | J Med Ethics (Jan. 2015)

Asian Journal of Transfusion Science (HTML Free text, Jan-June, 2016) | View as e-book (takes time to load)

• Special Issue (Abstracts): Annual Scientific Meeting of the British Blood Transfusion Society, Glasgow, UK, 13–15 Sept. 2017. Transfusion Med 2017;27(Supplement S2):1-73.
  • Speaker abstracts
  • Poster abstracts
  • Speaker index
• A few selected posters from Annual Scientific Meeting of the BBTS,13–15 Sept. 2017 | Well worth a read. Search for poster nos., e.g., 'PO35' (without quotes)
  • PO35 Anatomy of a deception - a case of donor impersonation [Authors from Irish Blood Transfusion Service] | Case of donor impersonating a relative with relative's collusion
  • PO58 SHOT: 20 years of reporting shows human error is most common cause of adverse incidents: use bedside checklist | Errors compounded by poor communication, shifts, understaffing
  • PO65 The final bedside check prior to transfusion: is a one or two person check safer? [SHOT authors] | 2-person independently checking is not necessarily safer, can provide false sense of security, each believing the other has checked correctly.
  • PO112 ‘Ah, so this is what transfusion is like in the real world … ’Enhancing safety via the evolution of simulation education for medical students | Study included prior e-learning, small group seminar, clinical simulations
  • PO120 Baby R: a success story of high levels of anti-D in pregnancy | Mother in 5th pregnancy,1 prior live birth, 5 antibodies,inc. anti-D, -M, -S, -Fy^b, -Jk^b
  • PO123 Transfusion education for non-medical prescribers: is ‘team based learning’ (TBL) an effective way to learn? | In UK NMPs with specific training can also prescribe blood components
• A few selected talks from Annual Scientific Meeting of the BBTS,13–15 Sept. 2017
  • SI07 (I07, not 107) Blood and bombs: blood service support following the 2017 Manchester Concert Bombing | 22 May 2017: 22 died, 116 admitted to hospital, including many young women
  • AW03 Getting the message across: turning science into stories [by Lorna Williamson, one of the founders of SHOT, 1994] | 'Agreeing the key message is critical, then you need simple unambiguous language, striking images and humour.'
  • SI15 (I not '1') Valuing the ‘near miss’ – an opportunity to learn from hospital complaints [Authors: NHSBT, Newcastle]
  • SI18 (I not '1') Human factors analysis of SHOT reports in 2016 | Factors leading to errors that were analysed: Staff, Environment, Organisation, Govt/Regulatory
  • SI24 (I not '1') Transfusion-transmitted HIV from seroconverted blood donors has not been identified in England: Findings from 8 years of lookbacks | The only documented HIV transmissions in the UK predate pooled NAT testing

• Abela MA, Fenning S, Maguire KA, Morris KG. Bacterial contamination of platelet components not detected by BacT/ALERT^®. Transfus Med. 2017 Sep 5. [Epub ahead of print]
• * Duncan JA, Nahirniak S, Onell R, Clarke G. Two cases of the variant RHD*DAU5 allele associated with maternal alloanti-D. Immunohematology. 2017 Jun;33(2):60-3
• Graham JE, Narayan S, Pendry K. Improving transfusion education for junior doctors; exploring UK experiences. Transfus Med. 2017 Apr;27(2):96-104. Epub 2016 Nov 7.
• Lyon RM, et al.; Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance Trust. Pre-hospital transfusion of packed red blood cells in 147 patients from a UK helicopter emergency medical service. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2017 Feb 14; 25(1):12.
• * Morton S, et al. Vox Sang International Forum on provision of granulocytes for transfusion and their clinical use: summary. Vox Sang. 2017 Sep 14. [Epub ahead of print]
• Stevens WT, Morse BC, Bernard A, Davenport DL, Sams VG, Goodman MD, et al. Incompatible type A plasma transfusion in patients requiring massive transfusion protocol: Outcomes of an Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma multicenter study. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2017 Jul;83(1):25-9.