TraQ Program of the BC PBCO

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Global News

General

• Wrap-up to Jehovah's Witness ethics case (17 June 2016) (Original case in May's TraQ newsletter)
• USA: Clinical labs using social media to recruit and retain top med techs, young pathologists (17 June 2016)
• WHO: World Blood Donor Day (14 June 2016)
  • Voluntary unpaid blood donations must increase rapidly to meet 2020 goal
• USA: FDA recognizes v 2.0 Donor History Questionnaires in May 27 2016 Guidance (27 May 2016)
  • Implementation of Acceptable Full Length and Abbreviated Donor History Questionnaires and Accompanying Materials for Use in Screening Donors of Blood and Blood Components (May 2016)
  • DHQ, v 2.0 (43 questions)
  • aDHQ, v. 2.0 (27 questions)
• New finding offer hope to those with severe hemophilia A (25 May 2016)
  • DiMichele DM. Hemophilia therapy ­ navigating speed bumps on the innovation highway. N Engl J Med May 2016; 374(21):2087-9. (Free full text editorial)
  • Shima M, Hanabusa H, Taki M, Matsushita T, Sato T, Fukutake K, et al. Factor VIII-mimetic function of humanized bispecific antibody in hemophilia A. N Engl J Med. 2016 May 26;374(21):2044-53. (Free full text)
• Canada (CSTM): Blog series recognizing Canadian transfusion medicine colleagues (Scroll to see all 6 blogs to date)

Canada

• Winnipeg's STARS air ambulances now have blood on board (21 June 2016)
• Ottawa trying to recoup funds earmarked for HCV tainted-blood victims (16 June 2016)
• Canada's new MSM policy, effective 1 Aug. 2016)
• Winnipeg lawyer calls new MSM blood donation policy 'ludicrous' (22 June 2016)
• Héma-Québec's MSM presser on eligibility criteria for donating blood (20 June 2016)
• CBS: Blood donation deferral for men who have sex with men reduced to one year on 15 August (Press release, 20 June 2016)
  • Next step: Gather evidence to support behaviour-based screening
  • Existing CBS criteria (FAQ): See 'Why not ask about safe sex practices or monogamy instead of all MSM behaviour?'
  • Background: CBS's Dana Devine on changing permanent MSM deferral to 5 years (~3 mins, Youtube, 2013)
  • Takes years to get sufficient data to assess MSM policy on blood safety, as incidence of HIV+ donors very low
  • Gay men abstinent for a year cleared by Health Canada to donate blood (20 June 2016)
• Paid plasma
  • Pay for plasma has moral risks (editorial) (19 June 2016)
  • Plans for a paid-plasma donation clinic in NB raises ethical debate (17 June 2016)
• Also see CSTM blog series under General above
• Meetings
  • 2016 CBS Annual International Symposium: Exploring the intersecting worlds of transfusion and transplantation medicine (Sept. 17, 2016, Toronto)

Australia

• ANZSBT 50th Anniversary (1964-2014): Reflections of Past Presidents | Fun presentation of 1964 news
  • Fits with the new blog, 'If you could read my mind' (see Resources below)
• Congratulations to Ken Davis on the award of AM in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for significant service to biomedical science and transfusion medicine in South Australia, and to a range of professional blood management groups (CTRL-F & search for Davis)

India

• Doctor suspended, two others sacked for alleged transfusion of HIV+ and HCV+ blood (18 June 2016)
  • Lab tech and data entry clerk fired
• Police seize more than 21,000 units of FFP stored in cooling van and arrest 3 including 2 lab technicians. (13 June 2016)
  • Planned to sell plasma to Reliance Life Sciences
• Viewpoint: Why blood transfusions are still giving Indians HIV (9 June 2016)
• Mumbai collecting ‘Bombay blood group’ to save Bangladeshi patient (10 June 2016)
• Why is transfusion not yet safe? (3 June 2016)
  • Transfusion-associated HIV cases self-reported, not proven cases. TA-HIV more socially acceptable.
• 2,234 infected with HIV via transfusion in past 17 months (31 May 2016)
  • But.... NACO says HIV data based on self-reporting (1 June 2016)

Nigeria

• How blood system safety runs at the mercy of foreigners (14 June 2016)
  • State of blood service since USA's PEPFAR pulled funding after 10 years

Oman

• Oil price plunge leaves Omani doctors without salaries (11 June 2016)

Switzerland

• Swiss Red Cross proposes one year blood donor deferral for MSM (21 June 2016)

UK

• Congratulations to Dapo Odumeru, who was awarded an MBE for services promoting blood and organ donation in Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (23 June 2016)
• Safety of blood donations in mainland UK improved since 2011 when lifetime ban on gay man lifted (6 June 2016)
  • For confirmed transfusion-transmitted infections, see NHSBT/PHE Epidemiology Unit (2015): Supplementary Data Tables and Figures 2014 (Table 2.1)
• Northern Ireland: Lifetime ban on gay men donating blood to be lifted (2 June 2016)

USA

• To keep blood supply safe, screening blood is more important than banning donors (16 June 2016)
• Circular of Information for the Use of Cellular Therapy Products (June 2016)
• 3 years and many inspections after patient died from wrong transfusion, NY lab still cannot do its own blood typing (5 June 2016)
• Baby has 12 intrauterine transfusions (27 May 2016)
  • Rh immune globulin not given in first pregnancy
• Also see General above and Diseases and Industry news below

Zimbabwe

• Prohibitive blood prices cost lives (10 June 2016)

Industry news

• USA: HHS gives Cerus, Terumo $48m in grants to develop pathogen reduction devices to reduce risk of Zika in blood transfusions (21 June 2016)
• USA: Bonfils Blood Center to merge with Blood Systems to strengthen their combined hold on blood collection in the West (16 June 2016)
• Swiss giants Novartis and Roche clash over cheaper copies of pricey biotech drugs (30 May 2016)
  • Novartis CEO said he would unleash "one of the best and most-potent oncology sales and medical forces" to peddle copy-cat rituximab (the Novartis drug's generic name for Roche's Rituxan) in Europe as early as next year.
  • Rituxan sales hit $7.1 billion in 2015
  • Tidbit: Novartis owns one-third of Roche's voting stock, which it may unload
• Theranos
• CEO Holmes to present in-house data on finger-stick blood collection and storage device at annual AACC conference (20 June 2016) Background:
  • Walgreens ends ties to Theranos, to close 40 blood test clinics (12 June 2016)
  • Theranos being investigated for fraud, unusual for a private company (19 Apr. 2016)

Diseases in the news

• USA (CDC): Draft Interim Zika Response Plan (June 14, 2016)
• More Zika Virus news | Also see Canada and USA above
• Also see Industry News above and Resources below (BC Contingency Plan for Arboviruses & the Blood Supply)

Resource Library / Links

NEW BC Ministry of Health/PBCO: BC Contingency Plan for Arboviruses & the Blood Supply (Posted 2 June 2016)

British Committee for Standards in Haematology. Guideline for blood grouping and red cell antibody testing in pregnancy (23 Feb. 2016)

UK: National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Transfusion Pathway and Guidelines (Nov. 2015)

NEW TM blog: If you could read my mind (Musings on blogging to share TM experiences)

May blog: The In Crowd (Musings on the relevance of transfusion journals)

@transfusionnews (TraQ webmaster's personal Twitter account)

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)

• Chung KW, Harvey A, Basavaraju SV, Kuehnert MJ. How is national recipient hemovigilance conducted in the United States? Transfusion. 2015 Apr;55(4):703-7. (PMC version)
• Deleuran I, Sheikh ZA, Hoeyer K. Tainted blood: Probing safety practices in the Danish blood system. Health (London). 2015 Sep; 19(5):490-506.
• DiMichele DM. Hemophilia therapy ­ navigating speed bumps on the innovation highway. N Engl J Med May 2016; 374(21):2087-9.
• Doughty HA. Transfusion guidelines: mind the gap. (editorial) Anaesthesia. 2016 Jul;71(7):743-7.
• * Goldman M, Uzicanin S, Scalia J, Scalia V, O'Brien SF. Impact of informing donors of low ferritin results. Transfusion. 2016 Jun 16. [Epub ahead of print]
• Holtzclaw A, Mrsic Z, Managbanag J, Calvano T, Colombo C. Transfusion-transmitted malaria not preventable by current blood donor screening guidelines: a case report. Transfusion. 2016 Jun 13. [Epub ahead of print]
• * Karam O, Tucci M. Massive transfusion in children. Transfus Med Rev. 2016 May 26. pii: S0887-7963(16)30026-8. [Epub ahead of print]
• Kersan L, McGarvey M, MacNeil C, Mackay A, McDowall K, Ahmed R. Red cell transfusion in the critically ill patient. Intensive Care Med Exp. 2015 Dec;3(Suppl 1):A915.
• Laposata M, Cohen MB. It's our turn: Implications for pathology from the Institute of Medicine's report on diagnostic error. (editorial) Arch Pathol Lab Med; 2016 June, 140(6): 505-7.
• Malm CB, Khoo NS, Granlund I, Lindstedt E, Hult A. Autologous doping with cryopreserved red blood cells - effects on physical performance and detection by multivariate statistics. PLoS One. 2016 Jun 10;11(6):e0156157.
• Mazepa MA, Raval JS, Park YA; Education Committee of the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists. Pathology consultation on electronic crossmatch. Am J Clin Pathol. 2014 May;141(5):618-24.
• Narbey D, Fillet AM, Jbilou S, Tiberghien P, Djoudi R. Case-control study of immediate and delayed vasovagal reactions in blood donors. Vox Sang. 2016 May 27. [Epub ahead of print]
• * Pecker LH, Timsar A, Pary PP, Denomme GA, Criss VR, Luban NL, Hwang EI, Wong EC. Unusual serological findings associated with ceftriaxone-induced immune hemolytic anemia in a child with disseminated low-grade glioma. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2016 Jun 15. [Epub ahead of print]
• Sapatnekar S, Figueroa PI. Cold antibodies in cardiovascular surgery: is preoperative screening necessary? Am J Clin Pathol. 2016 Jun 12. pii: aqw054. [Epub ahead of print]
• Shima M, Hanabusa H, Taki M, Matsushita T, Sato T, Fukutake K, et al. Factor VIII-mimetic function of humanized bispecific antibody in hemophilia A. N Engl J Med. 2016 May 26;374(21):2044-53.
• * Solh Z, Chan AK, Heddle NM. Transfusion premedication practices among pediatric health care practitioners in Canada: results of a national survey. Transfusion. 2016 Jun 16. [Epub ahead of print]
• * Solh Z, Athale U, Arnold DM, Cook RJ, Foley R, Heddle NM. Transfusion-related alloimmunization in children: epidemiology and effects of chemotherapy. Vox Sang. 2016 May 27. [Epub ahead of print]
• Welsh KJ, Bai Y; Education Committee of the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists. Pathology consultation on patients with a large Rh immune globulin dose requirement. Am J Clin Pathol. 2016 Jun 6. pii: aqw051. [Epub ahead of print]
• Zhang W, Li L, Deng X, Blümel J, Nübling CM, Hunfeld A, Baylis SA, Delwart E. Viral nucleic acids in human plasma pools. Transfusion. 2016 Jun 16. [Epub ahead of print]
• Zheng Y, Maitta RW. Alloimmunisation rates of SCD patients in U.S. differ from those in other geographical regions. Transfus Med. 2016 May 20. [Epub ahead of print]