AABB regularly surveys its members for information about blood collection, utilization and current practices. The AABB survey results are shared with AABB membership, who use them for benchmarking and to better understand the current state of the field. Additionally, AABB uses these data to identify industry trends and to inform AABB’s decision making, planning and policy positions.
Monoclonal antibodies are increasingly being used to treat patients with hematological malignancies and other disorders. Drugs such as daratumumab (Darzalex, anti-CD38) and magrolimab (anti-CD47) may interfere with red blood cell compatibility testing as CD38 and CD47 are expressed on red blood cells. Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies can interfere with indirect antihuman globulin (Coombs’) test used for antibody screening and cross-matching. Consequently, clinically relevant red blood cell alloantibodies may not be recognized in patients requiring blood transfusion. Additionally, pan-reactive agglutination may occur in patients treated with magrolimab, interfering with standard pretransfusion testing, including testing for ABO type.
The objective of this survey was to understand the experiences of transfusion services and immunohematology reference laboratories (IRL) in managing patients treated with these drugs, how they were dealing with problems encountered with compatibility testing, and how they were managing inventory as they provide blood transfusions for patients treated with monoclonal antibodies. The information provided will help AABB to develop guidance and education programs to address these challenges.
The survey was distributed to the contact person at AABB institutional member transfusion services and blood centers with managed transfusion services and immunohematology reference laboratories.
AABB is building out a robust data infrastructure to better capture important information about the strength and stability of the blood supply and about the practice of transfusion medicine.
This project was born from discussions about the challenges in evaluating the state of the blood supply, particularly with platelets and group O red blood cell components, due to the absence of reliable data. To identify a potential solution, AABB created a working group that developed a survey instrument to collect basic collection and utilization information on platelet and Group O RBC numbers. The goal is to identify trends in collection, utilization, and to capture the frequency and impact of shortages or of spikes in use on the blood supply.
Below is an interactive report from the survey with basic metrics to identify trends in collection and utilization. We hope that, over time, the survey results will evolve and be an important source of data for AABB members and the larger transfusion community. The more data we collect, the better the information we can provide.
Beginning Q4 2022, we will release the survey invitations quarterly requesting participants to provide monthly data. If a facility is interested in participating, or if there are any questions regarding this information, please contact Srijana Rajbhandary at srajbhandary@aabb.org.
Click the graph below to view interactive report:
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