Did you know that We Are Blood offers a variety of services to our Central Texas community and patients that go beyond blood donation? We do! We have an expertly trained nursing staff on our team, and we partner with highly trained medical providers to offer several clinical services both in-house at our North Lamar donor center and at the patient’s bedside at partnering medical facilities.
Depending on the procedure, these specialized offerings are held under the oversight of his or her physician. Let’s dive in to learn more about patient care provided by We Are Blood.
Directed Donations & Autologous Collections
Autologous collections include the donation and storage of a patient’s own blood prior to the preset transfusion date. For example, if you have surgery coming up, you may donate your own blood that could be transfused back to you during the time of your surgery. This type of donation is arranged through the patient’s physician. Autologous donors are screened under different qualification guidelines that focus primarily on the donor. Therefore, autologous blood is not suitable for any person other than the donor and may not be crossed over into the general supply.
Directed donations are donated by individuals for another patient in the future. Directed donation requests should come from the patient’s physician. Directed donors must meet all of the qualification and eligibility criteria of a regular blood donor. Surgical patients who have a specific transfusion date are best suited for directed donations. Having a specific transfusion date allows for planning/scheduling to ensure that the blood does not expire prior to the transfusion date and prevents the patient from having to wait for the directed blood to be made available for transfusion.
Therapeutic Phlebotomy
A therapeutic phlebotomy is dedicated to patients who may need to reduce iron stores from hemochromatosis, polycythemia vera and secondary polycythemia. The removal of whole blood or red blood cells from the patient can help with their treatment of an underlying medical condition.
Therapeutic donors may or may not qualify for regular donations. Those who do not qualify are screened under different and less restrictive qualification guidelines. Therefore, their blood is not suitable for general patient transfusion and will not cross over into the general supply. However, if a donor qualifies for a crossover program AND meets all regular donor eligibility requirements at the time of donation, including a full medical history questionnaire, they may qualify to have their blood cross over to the general inventory.
We Are Blood is proud to offer Hereditary Hemochromatosis and Testosterone Replacement Therapy crossover programs that allow the blood from qualified donors to be used to support the community blood needs.
Cellular therapy: Mononuclear Collections & PROVENGE®
We Are Blood also offers cellular therapy treatment including mononuclear cell (MNC) collections for Provenge. MNCs are a mixture of cells that contain lymphocytes, monocytes, and stem cells and can be isolated from peripheral blood. The procedure is done by collecting and separating the cells using continuous flow centrifugation technology. MNC collections are primarily used in immunotherapy treatments.
Provenge (sipuleucel-T) is an autologous cellular immunotherapy for the treatment of asymptomatic or metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). The procedure collects a patient’s blood, and the antigen-presenting cells are exposed to a protein called prostatic acid phosphatase. This allows the APCs to activate and when the cells are transfused back into the patient it interacts with the body’s white blood cells and helps to fight the disease.
Therapeutic Apheresis
There are several different types of therapeutic apheresis: therapeutic plasma exchange, red cell exchange and depletion, and white blood cell depletion.
A therapeutic plasma exchange is an apheresis procedure that removes undesirable plasma from the blood and replaces it with colloid solution. It is used for the treatment of various diseases and conditions, including myasthenia gravis, Guillain Barre syndrome, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), and chronic inflammatory demyelinating neuropathy (CIDP).
Red blood cell exchange is an apheresis procedure that removes abnormal red blood cells from the patient and replaces them with healthy cells. This procedure is primarily used to treat acute crises or chronic management for patients with sickle cell disease and other red cell-affiliated diseases and conditions.
White blood cell depletion is a therapeutic apheresis procedure that removes white blood cells from the blood to lower cell counts which helps in the treatment of hyperleukocytosis occurring in association with leukemia.
SPECIAL procedures FOR SPECIAL Patients
Regardless of the procedure or treatment plan, our nurses utilize the most advanced technology; more importantly, they prioritize exceptional patient care to ensure every patient feels at home and part of our family.
Learn more about the services available or access the necessary medical forms, here.