Transfusion strategies: opportunities for improvement

Opportunities for improving transfusion practice that involve patient care, technological advancements, and technology changes in the clinical arena are discussed. Patient care should be enhanced by optimizing transfusion therapy and the source of donors of platelet concentrates, i.e., single donor platelets (obtained by plateletapheresis from a single donor) or to random donor platelets (containing a pool of six to eight platelet concentrates separated from whole blood donations). The availability of "third-generation" leukocyte-reduction filters provides the technology for significantly and consistently providing leukocyte-reduced blood components. The potential benefits of using these filters is presented. Platelet crossmatching represents a technology change involving clinical practice. Suggestions for incorporating this test into platelet transfusion algorithms are included.