Date Visited : October 14, 2008 State Number: 19

Contact Information: Inland Northwest Blood Center 1341 Northwood Center Ct Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83814 Monique Dugaw Phone: 800-423-0151   Email: monique.dugaw@inbc2.org Web Site: www.inbc2.org

Transfusions most urgently needed by cancer patients

By ALECIA WARREN
Staff writer

Not everyone can sacrifice a kidney or a heart. But anyone can give platelets, which Al Whitney has set out to prove.
The 71-year-old Ohio resident has spent the last year trekking across the country donating at blood banks in his Platelets Across America Tour. His latest stop on Tuesday was in Coeur d’Alene, where staff members inserted a needle in his arm at the Inland Northwest Blood Center.
 

Funding his travels almost entirely out of his own pocket, Whitney is bent on rallying the nation to participate in the safe and easy procedure that will save lives immediately.“Most people don’t donate blood because no one asks them,” Whitney said while blood flowed from his arm in the clinic room. “Well, now the blood center staff and I are asking.”
Platelets are small cells in the blood that provide clotting. Donations are most urgently needed by cancer patients, who lose their platelets under chemotherapy, and burn victims, who need the platelets for their bodies to repair.
Platelet transfusions are also needed to assist in organ transplants, and are commonly used in heart and brain surgeries. They’re even used during childbirth.

“Anytime you have excessive bleeding, there’s a great need for platelets,” said Misty Frazier, INBC nurse.
Platelet donors can give up to three full doses for patient transfusion in one sitting at the center. It would take 18 whole blood donations to provide the same amount.

Platelets only have a five-day shelf life, Frazier added, so there is a constant need for donors. The tubing in Whitney’s arm on Tuesday ran into an apheresis machine, which clicked and vibrated as it pumped his blood. During platelet donation, blood is cycled through the machine, separating the platelets out. Then the rest of the blood is pumped back into the body. The entire process takes between 40 minutes and two hours.

 
Because donors retain most of their blood, recovery is quicker than in whole blood donations. Those giving whole blood will need eight weeks for the body to regenerate the components necessary to donate again, but platelet donors will be ready within 72 hours. “It doesn’t hurt at all,” Whitney added with a smile.