An alternative to donated blood:
Frozen autologous blood storage
Most people who need blood after surgery or an accident rely on the supply of donated blood housed in the nation’s blood banks. But that approach has some potential drawbacks. Donated blood can be in short supply, may not be an exact match to your own and cause an autoimmune reaction or could possibly be contaminated with a virus or other type of infection.
Some physicians recommend banking your own blood before a surgical procedure, but the donation must be done weeks before the surgery and, over time, refrigerated blood can lose its capacity to carry oxygen effectively which means tissues may recover more slowly. In addition, donating blood in the weeks before undergoing surgery can leave you with a lower than normal blood volume (it takes about a month for your body to restore a pint of blood), making you anemic and lacking the adequate number of red blood cells and plasma you need to heal optimally.
A firm based in New York, however, offers another solution to the quandary. Idant Labs collects a patient’s blood, then freezes it at 120 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. A sterile, biological “antifreeze” solution, which is removed when the blood is thawed for use, is added so that the red blood cells can be stored for up to 10 years and plasma for up to one year. When the blood is needed, the thawing process takes an hour to an hour and a half and the firm says it will deliver the thawed, prepared blood to any hospital in the world within 24 hours. Once thawed, blood remains fresh for up to 14 days.
Another difference between using donated blood and your own frozen autologous blood for transfusion is that donated blood is made up only of red blood cells without the plasma that is part of whole blood. Plasma is a key component in the clotting process, so receiving both your own red blood cells and plasma can help clotting and healing after surgery. Idant Labs cites several studies that link improved post-operative outcomes for heart and orthopedic surgery to the using the “newest” blood with the most optimal hematocrit and hemoglobin levels for transfusion.
In addition to the storage technology, Idant also uses a unique machine developed by the firm’s CEO Dr. Joseph Feldschuh to assess a patient’s total blood volume before and during surgery. This measurement helps protect against under- and over-transfusing a patient and the negative health effects that can occur from those events. To measure actual blood volume, a tracer is injected via IV and a one ounce total blood sample is drawn over the course of 45 minutes to an hour. The dilution of the tracer in the blood samples is used to calculate total blood volume. According to Idant, the measurements of red blood cell and plasma count made by their blood volume analyzer are 98 percent accurate.
“The safest blood is your own,” says Dr. Feldschuh. “It is available when you need it and is an exact match to your own blood type. There’s also strong evidence that using your own blood for transfusion can help you heal more quickly so frozen autologous blood storage makes sense.”