International forum: Europe. Buffy-coat-derived platelet concentrates: Swedish experience

The need for source material for plasma products such as factor VIII preparations and improving the quality of red cells for transfusion became determining factors in the choice of methods for blood components in the 1970s and 1980s in Sweden. The possibility to make platelet concentrates (PC) from buffy coats (BC-PC) instead of from platelet-rich plasma (PRP-PC), as first described in England and The Netherlands, using an additive solution as the major component of the platelet storage medium, as first described by Rock et al., has been shown to influence favourably the national supply of blood components and has become accepted as the normal standard procedure in the first half of the 1990s. Leucocyte-depleted PCs, produced from pools of 4-6 BCs, used in all multiple platelet transfusions to thrombocytopenic patients, have strongly reduced the demand for HLA compatible PCs. Nationwide, 79% of the demand of PCs is supplied as BC-PCs, mostly leuco-depleted which, so far, have compared favourably with apheresis-PCs for cost-effectiveness.