Training courses for pediatric apheresis on site; how apheresis technology transfer can be performed

Apheresis technology for pediatric patients and donors is still cumbersome, it is rare, mostly done in departments specialized for apheresis in adult patients, and therefore the staff is more or less anxious about dealing with especially little pediatric patients or donors. Our center is specialized in pediatrics and has a department for apheresis. We offered training courses for interested centers, which want to use the AMICUS™ system for leukapheresis in small children. In a 1-2 ay course the principles of leukapheresis in very small children were trained. To investigate the reproducibility of this training courses we invited the centers to share their data with us. As a standard we used a formula (C=[(AD):B×0.5]:1000) for predicting the CD34+ cell yield (C) by calculating the yield from total blood volume (D) processed, bodyweight (B), CD34+ cell count in peripheral blood (A) and an assumption of the collection efficiency of 50% (0.5). We hypostasized that the deviation of different centers should be in comparable limits of agreement as our own data. Thirteen centers from Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia asked from 1999 until today for support for pediatric leukapheresis. 6 centers sent 20 case report forms back (9 blood priming, 6 saline priming), from which 15 were completely filled in and available for the evaluation. The data were compared to 129 leukapheresis (41 blood priming, 88 saline priming) performed in our institution. The limit of agreement to the formula was -17.6% (±43) compared to -10.5% (±36). There was no statistically differences by the Mann-Whitney-U-test (p=0.5607). We conclude that training course held on site in different centers in different country could led to reproducible performance of standardized leukapheresis procedures in small children. In the future this could be a way for quality control in pediatric apheresis.