The following information is shared by a member of the CBBS. It may be of interest to the general membership.

At the member's institution, many surgeons had learned of picnic coolers that were used to hold 10 units of RBCs or FFP for liver transplants and were requesting coolers for all types of surgery. The initial system used cardboard boxes cut down to act as a buffer between the ice bricks and blood units, but the volume of blood being requested and the departure of a 'set-up' person meant that an improvement in the system was needed. The original transport boxes were unsatisfactory due to: (i) condensation wetting the cardboard, (ii) decontamination issues, and (iii) limited number of boxes that would fit the cooler.

The following system was designed. Solter Plastics in West Los Angeles had a polycarbonate sheet that was "corrugated", so they were asked to fabricate a five-sided box (one open end), that would fit in the middle of an "Igloo" cooler, with enough room on the ends to accommodate Coleman "Brite Ice" sealed ice bricks. The box has enough room to hold 10 AS-1 RBC units or 10 FFP units. Although the unit when loaded is not light, it is manageable and can be loaded onto a cart if multiple coolers are needed in the operating room.

Validation studies have been limited to internal use only, but there are plans to use an incubator in Microbiology to do extreme temperature validation along with a cold box for low extreme temps. The data have validated the box for 8 hours for 4-10 units, though use of "polar pack" gel refrigerant bags allows us to send 1- 3 units plus enough polar packs to equal 4 units for cases that require only 1-3 units.

Actually the system will maintain ten components at 1-10 degrees C for 24 hours if left unopened. So now this member has a system that requires minimal maintenance, with a capacity to handle all blood transport needs, using only one type of cooler validated for minimum to maximum, RBCs, FFP, Platelets (they leave out the ice bricks and just use 22 degree polar packs for temperature stabilization), instead of different types of coolers for each product.

Voila! It may not seem like much, but if other labs and blood centers are faced with this problem, this member thought this experience might save them some time and headache.

If anyone has questions, comments or knows of a different system that might be worth sharing with the CBBS membership, please let the Editor know at cbbs-network@mail.com.

Please submit comments to the e-Network Forum.

Ira A. Shulman, MD
CBBS e-Network Forum Editor & Moderator