Hematology and Infectious Diseases

Effect of Advanced Technologies on Blood Based Products

 A blood substitute is a substance used to mimic and fulfill some functions of biological blood. It aims to provide an alternative to blood transfusion, which is transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into another. Thus far, there are no well-accepted oxygen-carrying blood substitutes, which are the typical objective of a red blood cell transfusion; however, there are widely available non-blood volume expanders for cases where only volume restoration is required. These are helping doctors and surgeons avoid the risks of disease transmission and immune suppression, address the chronic blood donor shortage, and address the concerns of Jehovah's Witnesses and others who have religious objections to receiving transfused blood. Pathogen reduction using riboflavin and UV light is a method by which infectious pathogens in blood for transfusion are inactivated by adding riboflavin and irradiating with UV light. This method reduces the infectious levels of disease-causing agents that may be found in donated blood components, while still maintaining good quality blood components for transfusion. This type of approach to increase blood safety is also known as “pathogen inactivation” in the industry.