IMPROVED UTILIZATION OF BLOOD DUE TO SYSTEMATIC FRACTIONATION

The use of human blood has developed from transfusion of whole blood into blood component therapy. In addition, plasma has been made available for fractionation using large scale, industrial methods. Fortunately enough, all the different constituents of the blood are seldom needed in one and the same patient. The proper use of human blood becomes an optimization problem with important implications for producers as well as users of the products. While the use of red cells has ceased to increase, the demand of plasma for production of Factor VIII has tended to be enormous. Improved methods, both at the blood bank level and in the fractionation process, have become available in recent years, which now tends to bring production and demand in harmony. What the impact of recombinant technology will be is still unknown. The demand of platelet preparations has increased drastically within few years. Here also, important methodological developments have appeared giving hope to improve the efficacy of treatment, and replacing quantity with quality. Quality assurance in a wide sense plays an important role in this process