The purchase of blood irradiation equipment for 250,000 euros will shorten the delivery of blood in Vilnius, Daumantas Gutauskas, director of the National Blood Centre (NBC), has said.
“The process [of irradiation] itself is shortened to six and a half minutes, and from the moment of ordering we can deliver the blood component in Vilnius in about an hour; as regards other Lithuanian cities, as I said, it may take a while due to traffic conditions,” Gutauskas told reporters in Vilnius on Wednesday.
“An hour is certainly fully sufficient time to save a patient, even in the event of a disaster. The problem that the delay in the delivery of irradiated blood could have caused someone to die or have some bad health consequences is a thing of the past now,” the NBC director said.
Until now, blood components were transported to the Kauno Klinikos hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences for irradiation. According to Gutauskas, this process used to take much longer.
“We [used to] receive an order, type the blood, then transport the blood component to Kaunas, irradiate it there for about half an hour, and then transport it to the hospital,” the NBC director said.
“At least three to four hours used to add up…,” he said.
Irradiated blood components are used in the treatment of newborns and patients with oncology and other serious diseases.
Only blood components individually selected for the recipient are irradiated to minimize transfusion-related adverse reactions and eliminate rejection.
Source: BNS
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