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Components Laboratory
The Components Laboratory operates on a 24 hours/7 days per week schedule over 365 days per year in order to better serve our Tri-State hospital partners.
Hoxworth Blood Center is licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Components Laboratory manufactures blood and blood components in compliance with current good manufacturing practices (cGMP). The end result is a safe and reliable transfusion-ready blood product. For additional information, please click on the link order to view the "Where Does My Blood Go?" brochure.
During our fiscal year (July 2009 thru June 2010) the Components Laboratory processed over 94,029 whole blood and red cell donor collections, as well as an additional 8,345 apheresis donor collections, into over 300,000 separate blood products. These products include:
- Red Blood Cells (RBC)
- Platelets
- Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP)
- Plasma Cryoprecipitated Reduced
The Components Laboratory also provides blood component long-term storage processing and product modification, as needed, to provide optimal component therapy and product availability to patients in the Tri-State area. Further processing and manufacturing include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Red Blood Cell Cryopreservation – usually done to provide an inventory of rare donor units for future anticipated use.
- Acrodose™ Platelet Pooling - pools of 4 random platelets with a 5-day expiration tested to ensure a therapeutic dose is provided.
- Random Platelet Pooling - pools based on requested numbers of platelets with a 4-hour outdate.
- Hematocrit Adjustment - used to provide a higher red cell content for special patient needs.
- Irradiation – requested to prevent transfusion associated graft-vs-host disease (TAGVHD) in immnocompromised patient populations.
- Washing – to remove unwanted plasma proteins associated with some types of transfusion reactions.
- Platelet Product Volume Reduction – to provide a therapeutic dose and prevent volume overload.
Recovered Plasma Manufacturing
Recovered Plasma is the residual plasma left over from manufacturing transfusable blood products that is harvested as a valuable source material that is used to prepare a variety of blood derivative products, such as albumin, Factor XIII and Factor IV concentrates. This process ensures optimal use is attained of the donor's blood donation.
The Components Laboratory serves as the primary contact for Hoxworth Blood Center outside of the 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. normal operating hours for our hospital customers. To communicate urgent needs and/or adverse product reactions (including suspected TRALI cases) please contact the laboratory at 558-1570.
Product Management
The Product Management Department serves as the interface with our hospital partners and manages the community's blood product inventories.
This department receives, fills and ships orders via courier service. At times when Hoxworth Blood Center participates in blood product resource sharing, the department is responsible for importing and exporting blood components.
Blood product inventories are monitored and tracked on a daily basis by the Product Management Team to ensure safe levels of blood and blood products are available daily for our hospital partners.
Product Management also distributes plasma derivatives to our pharmacy customers as needed.
You may contact Product Management directly at 558-1537.
Updated: 1/14/11