The Impact on the U.S. Blood Supply of Allocating Younger Blood for Transfusion: A New Allocation Method

• Activity Number: 364
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Risk Analysis
• Author(s): Arianna Simonetti* and Hussein Ezzeldin and Mikhail Menis and Stephen McKean and Hector Izurieta and Steven Anderson and Richard Forshee
• Companies: FDA/CBER and FDA/CBER and FDA/CBER and Acumen LLC and FDA/CBER and FDA/CBER and FDA/CBER
• Keywords: Blood Supply ; Stock and Flow Model ; Mean Age of Blood ; Red Blood Cells ; RBCs lesion

Abstract

Prolonged Red Blood Cells (RBCs) storage may results in transfusion-associated adverse effects, which represent a public health safety concern. Recent studies have not reached yet a final verdict on association between the age of RBCs and adverse clinical outcomes in patients receiving blood transfusion. Decision makers need tools to assess any disruption in US blood supply levels if alternative policies for the use of blood products are considered. We refined the Stock-and-Flow simulation model of the US blood supply (Simonetti et al. 2014), by a new allocation method to evaluate the impact on supply of preferentially transfusing younger blood to a subset of critically-ill patients as opposed to the general recipients. The new algorithm attempts to accommodate the needs of blood transfusions in those patients in which younger RBCs seem to be more beneficial, compared to the current standard of care. During the simulation, the algorithm calculated the mean age of the transfused blood units and quantified the performance of the US blood system for several simulated scenarios. Results showed up to a 42% reduction in the total blood supply when deviating from the standard of care.