A Canadian blood banker reports that her hospital has a Pneumatic Tube System already in service at her hospital. They are currently looking into using this for the transport of blood and blood products from the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory to various other areas in the hospital. She wants to know if other colleagues would share information regarding validation on the integrity of the products being transported, and if so what tests are performed pre and post transport to conduct a credible validation study?

Editor's Note: Previous forum discussions on this issue merit review.

• Use of pneumatic tube system for transporting platelet components
• Can Pneumatic Tube Systems in a Hospital Be Used for Transporting Blood Components?

In reply to the above, the following responses were received.

1. A transfusion medicine physician in Chicago reports that when his laboratory moved to a new building a few years ago, they checked the time interval and the arrival temperature (with a scanner thermometer) for RBCs. They also checked the supernatant potassium level in RBC units pre and post shipment to verify there was no hemolysis. They used the longest pathway in the hospital according to the tube engineers. They did not look at other components. Also, they do not send RhIG through the tube system, on the advice of their pharmacy. They avoid sending protein medications such as IVIG through the tube system because of concern about aggregation of the protein during agitation. As he recalls, their RhIG supplier concurred with this several years ago when they inquired. This creates some extra transport logistics because their OB pavilion is a block away. But he has never seen anything in writing about RhIG per se, could not find any articles about it back then, and there is nothing in the package inserts about this.

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