"Adequate platelet availability in some communities can sometimes be a challenge," says Allan Ross, President of Pall Medical. "The Acrodose PL System provides an opportunity for blood centers and hospitals to increase the availability of bacterially tested, leukoreduced, and pooled whole blood derived platelets in a cost-effective manner."
Platelets are derived from donors in either a one-to-two hour procedure called apheresis or from standard whole blood collections. Apheresed platelets are limited by donor availability. They are also time consuming and capital intensive to obtain. Regardless of which collection process is used, bacterial contamination of platelets is the leading infectious cause of illness and death from a blood transfusion. Single donor platelets are tested for bacterial contamination using a sensitive culture detection method such as Pall's eBDS, enhanced bacterial system. Whole blood derived platelet units on the other hand are tested using less sensitive methods due to cost, product loss, and logistical constraints of testing several individual units to obtain a standard therapeutic dose. This has resulted in a disparity of test sensitivities as well as underutilization of a valuable blood resource.
The new Acrodose PL System enables blood centers to pool individual whole blood derived platelets prior to storage and conduct a single bacterial contamination test with its integrated Pall eBDS technology. Studies using the Pall eBDS System with pooled p
'"/>
Contact: Marcia Katz
marcia_katz@pall.com
516-801-9128
Pall Corporation
6-Oct-2005