Reasons for moving toward a patient-centric paradigm of clinical transfusion medicine practice

The combination of patient blood management (PBM) modalities and multicomponent apheresis permits us to administer even safer transfusions than those using the "safer-than-ever" blood components distributed in the beginning of the 21st century. PBM identifies a patient at risk of transfusion and formulates a multidisciplinary and multimodal-yet individualized-plan for reducing the need for allogeneic transfusion. Multicomponent apheresis can collect any combination of red blood cells, platelets, and plasma from the same donor during the same donation, and it should eventually reserve all components harvested from the same donation for transfusion to the same recipient. Together, PBM and multicomponent apheresis represent a new paradigm-the patient-centric paradigm-of transfusion medicine whose purpose is to reduce the transfusion risk for each individual patient to the level of the ALARA (as-low-as-reasonably-achievable) risk. PBM and multicomponent apheresis can meet a patient's transfusion needs with at least twofold fewer allogeneic donor exposures, thereby reducing the risk of infectious and immunologic complications of transfusion by at least twofold. The reduction in risk includes the leading cause of transfusion-related mortality (transfusion-related acute lung injury) and the cardinal threat to transfusion safety (the next "HIV-like" pathogen to emerge in the future). Once it is determined that PBM and multicomponent apheresis can replace the current blood-procurement system at a "reasonable" cost and without jeopardizing the supply of blood and components, the patient-centric paradigm should replace the current, component-centric paradigm of transfusion medicine to reduce the transfusion risk to the level of the ALARA risk.