Blood donation is essentially a process that many individuals go through every year. People involved in the process will tell you that you are saving a life, but they don’t specify what happens after the donation. Blood can be donated by just about anyone who is seventeen years old and over. You may also need to weigh around 110lbs and more, and you need to be in good health. As soon as you arrive at the blood donation center, they record your history and allow you to go through a small body checkup. After having your blood collected, it is placed in test tubes and then on ice as it awaits being transported to the center for processing.
At the center, the blood is placed in labs, and all your information is recorded in computerized systems. Your blood is then separated into various components from which some can be transfused, and some cannot. The platelets and red blood cells are leuko-reduced, meaning that the white cells are taken out, so that chances of the recipient reacting negatively to the new blood are lowered. It is after this that every component in the blood is packaged as one single unit to be henceforth transfused to a person.
In the lab, your blood undergoes several tests. With these tests, the doctors are able to decipher whether the blood has any possible diseases and what blood type it is. After the conclusion of the tests, the processing center receives your test results, and if they are positive, they are discarded. In case they get that your blood is positive, you are offered this information promptly. In case they get that your units are okay, they are stored. The units are stored separately whereby platelets are stored at room temperature, cryo and plasma are frozen in a medical freezer, and red cells are refrigerated. From here, you get your blood shipped to hospitals as soon as they desire.
As the blood gets to the transfusion process, the doctors are the ones who will declare a patient to be needy of the blood. The doctors decipher the type of blood that the patient requires. Sometimes, if patients are suffering from anemia or any iron deficiency, they are given red blood cells to increase iron levels and hemoglobin. A patient going through chemotherapy may receive a platelet transfusion. A patient suffering from severe burns and or liver failure gets a plasma transfusion instead. This then shows that you need to have all your units separated in the lab so that it can be easy when it is time to transfer blood to a given patient needing a given need.