Outdated blood in hospitals – a reply

by Dr Sudath Samaraweera

(October 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardain) This is regarding the news item of 'Outdated blood in hospitals' by Nazly Cassim. I would like to highlight some factual errors in it. The recent scandal in the Central Blood Bank was regarding use of outdated blood components storage kits. These equipments has an expiary date that should be used by. Once blood or components are collected, they should be used by a specified date. If not used, they have to be discarded. The expiary date depends on the blood component. For example, whole blood, platelets, plasma etc are having different expiary dates.

It is very unlikely to administer expired blood to a patient. This is because even blood bank issues expired blood components, the administering physician, usually the House Officer of the ward checks each packet before transfusing. This check include name of the patient, BHT number, blood component packet number, date collected and date expiring (this is with regards to the blood component but not with regard to the storing packet) and blood group. No house officer will dare to authorise expired blood since if some thing goes wrong it will cost his/ her whole career.

In the same article there was the concern regarding unused blood dumping down the drainages. Usually requirement of blood is an emergency. The objective of the blood bank is to keep ready for an emergency. This cannot be predicted. Therefore, it is unavoidable to discard unused blood. Efficiency of a blood bank can be measured by whether blood was available when it is required and has unavailability made patient management difficult. A justifiable overstorage is accepted. However, monitoring of this is also important to ensure that overstorage is far above the acceptable limits. - Sri Lanka Guardian