Platelet donation is a citizen act with 175,000 platelet donations per year and one million patients requiring a blood transfusion or a blood derivative. What is platelet donation and how is it used? Answers now for the platelet donation process , isn’t it?
Learn more about platelet donation
The terms of donations are different depending on the product of interest. There are three families of blood cells: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets:
- The biological norm of platelets is 150 to 400 Giga / L: below, we talk about thrombocytopenia, above, thrombocytosis.
- The life of a wafer is 7 to 10 days.
- Platelets allow blood clotting, they prevent bleeding.
- They are produced by the bone marrow and degraded in the spleen.
Depending on the blood product, the terms of donation are different:
The platelet donation, in apheresis, lasts longer than a standard blood donation, about 90 minutes. The pouch can hold up to 650 mL of blood or 6 times more than a standard blood donation. A single donation can be enough to help a patient. Her platelets can be given up to 4 times a year for a woman and 5 times a year for a man, with a minimum of 8 weeks apart. Platelets can only be stored for 5 days. As demand is important, regular donations are essential to patients.
Good to know: apheresis allows the separation of different blood components. Only the blood element of interest is taken, everything else is re-injected into the donor.
Donation of blood and derived products
- A donation of any kind, blood, plasma, red blood cells, platelets are framed by a strict legal protocol:
- It must be between 18 and 70 years old, the over 60s being subject to the approval of an EFS collection doctor.
- Weighing at least 50 kg.
A medical safety interview prior to the donation makes it possible to address all the contraindications to donation:
- Infections in progress
- Sexual life at risk of sexually transmitted infections (men who have had sex with men can give blood if they have not had sex for a year)
- Vaccinations, endoscopic gestures, an accident of exposure to the blood, consumption of certain toxic or recent drugs.
- extended trips or stays in endemic areas (extended stay, greater than 1 year accumulated in the British Isles between 1980 and 1996)
- pregnancy, childbirth or recent abortion
- Persons in a position of guardianship, curatorship or safeguard of justice.
Each donation is tested to detect the presence of infectious agents, viruses, bacteria or parasites that may endanger the health of the recipient patient. For each donation, a blood sample is frozen and stored for 5 years in order to remotely perform additional tests if a problem has been encountered during a transfusion. It is important to know where and when to give blood, you can also go directly to the EFS website.
Different uses of platelet donation
Donation to the sick
A platelet count below 20 Giga / L is life-threatening. The use of transfusion concerns different types of diseases responsible for thrombocytopenia:
Diseases for lack of platelet production:
- A hematological malignancy (cancer at the expense of blood cells) such as leukemia.
- A bone marrow disease responsible for insufficient production of blood cells: bone marrow fibrosis, presence of metastases in the bone marrow, myelodysplasias, megaloblastic.
- A medullary aplasia (functional insufficiency of blood cells production by the marrow), spontaneous or caused by a treatment like chemotherapy or radiotherapy.