Ever wonder what happens to your blood after you donate? Or how exactly does the blood you give get to the patients who need it? These are good questions!
Let’s take you through the journey of a unit of blood, from the beginning of the donation process to when a patient receives your extraordinary contribution.
The journey begins before you make your donation. During the medical screening, we assign a donation number in our computer system. Once your donation is completed, we label the blood bag with this number and place it in a transport container with ice until Vitalant can take it to a processing center.
By the time your donation reaches the processing center, your donation information has already been electronically transmitted. This is how we keep track of your donation. Whole blood, the most common donation, is spun in centrifuges. These devices separate the blood into its transfusable parts. (If you Power Up to a Power Red or platelet donation, it’s not necessary to use centrifuges since your donation has been separated into components during the donation process.)
Once we process the whole blood, the parts of your blood donation officially become individual units. For optimal storage, we keep each unit under the appropriate conditions: red blood cells in the refrigerator; plasma in the freezer; and platelets at room temperature.
In the meantime, we test the little tubes of blood taken when you donated for blood type and more than a dozen infectious diseases. (If your blood tests positive for an infectious disease, your donation will be discarded and you will be notified.) We send test results electronically to the manufacturing center. When we get the test results, Vitalant labels them with the product name and blood type. At the hospitals, doctors determine what kind of transfusion a patient needs.
Each of your blood components serves a vital role. Red blood cells may help someone having surgery, platelets will likely give strength to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, and your plasma will help patients with serious burns or severe blood loss. Learn more about the impact your blood donation makes.
You may be wondering: How long can blood be stored? Unfortunately, blood can’t last forever; every blood donation has a shelf life. Red cells can last up to 42 days, depending on the type of anticoagulant used when they are stored. Because platelets are so perishable, they can only be kept at room temperature and must be transfused within a week. And plasma can be frozen for up to a year.
Though the journey your blood donation takes following your appointment may seem like a lengthy one — what with the steps for being typed, tested, processed, stored and distributed — it actually occurs in just a couple of days.
The beginning of the blood journey starts when you make an appointment. Without you and your generous donation, there wouldn’t be blood to process or send to hospitals. That makes you powerful. Learn more about the blood donation process.
When you do good for others, you do good for yourself. Make your next lifesaving appointment today.