Bonfils Blood Center Provides "Special" Inventory to Hospital Partners

Bonfils Blood Center's transfusion services department provides a variety of services to our healthcare partners including maintaining a vast inventory of "special" blood products. This "special" or "rare donor" inventory is an invaluable community resource to both physicians and patients in need. For example, just last month The Children's Hospital in Denver contacted the blood center's transfusion services department requesting blood products for a sickle cell anemia patient in need of a red blood cell exchange transfusion. Six C, K, Fya, Jkb and s negative red cell units were needed to replace the sickled cells in the child's system. This phenotype is present in just 0.3 percent of the population. Bonfils' transfusion services department identified six compatible units in its inventory for delivery to The Children's Hospital the same day.

Through years of proactive donor screening, Bonfils' special inventory has grown to a size that allows for efficient historical searching, as evidenced in the aforementioned story, instead of immediate testing that can be both time consuming and costly . Bonfils began screening donors for specific blood characteristics in 1978 to support patients with rare phenotypes, sickle cell anemia or red cell alloantibodies and autoantibodies. Since the inception of the special inventory more than 125,000 of Bonfils' blood donors have been antigen screened.

Phenotypically similar products, or those that closely match a patient's own antigen type, are transfused to help prevent formation of alloantibodies in a recipient. During any given month, transfusion services staff spends 72 hours screening blood donor samples for high-incidence antigens and other specific phenotypes. On a typical day, the transfusion services special inventory contains about 350 units. Approximately 90 of those units are CDe/CDe - a phenotype present in only 17 percent of the population - which are important for patients with an an antibody that can cause a serious transfusion reaction. Another 210 units are phenotypically matched units for sickle cell patients and 25 units are negative for high-incidence antigens.

This inventory constantly fluctuates due to donor availability and product usage, so we continue to screen new donors in order to maintain this important service and give patients the best opportunity for survival. Should you have questions about on a specific need for units in our special inventory please contact the transfusion services department at 303.363.2443.

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