Assignment of outdate for 5 day plasma

The Medical Director of a University Medical Center in Southern California writes: "We're going live with 5 day plasma. What is the exact outdate people are assigning? Is it on midnight of the 5th day (just as samples expire midnight of the 3rd day)? Or is it exactly 120 hours from thaw?"

What do you do at your facility?

The Editors note that the following dicussions may be germane to this topic:

• Experience in the use of THAWED PLASMA
• Relabeling thawed FFP as thawed plasma
• Expiration Date of Plasma Frozen within 24 Hours?

Editors' note: AABB Standards states the expiration of Thawed Plasma to be "5 days from beginning of thawing of original product" (24th edition, Table 5.1.8A).

ADDENDA Jan. 2, 2008

1. The Transfusion Services Support Program Manager for a large blood supplier on the East Coast responds:
   
   The "rules" for 5 days would be midnight on the 5th day after the product is thawed. This topic was discussed extensively at the 2006 AABB Annual Meeting and in the example discussed at one of the "Ask the Experts" session, a plasma product thawed at 8AM on a Monday (and labeled as plasma) would expire at midnight on Saturday. This is similar to a platelet product expiring at midnight on the 5th day after the product is collected or any other product that the expiration period is specified in days rather than hours. One can always choose to be more restrictive and apply a shorter expiration period, e.g., 120 hours, which sometimes occurs simply because that algorithm was specified by a particular computer system/programmer and the safeguards of using an automated calculation and assignment of a (shortened) expiration date outweighs the risks of the use of a manual system that may result in the erroneous assignment of an extended expiration date (which is FDA reportable).

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Ira A. Shulman, MD
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Elizabeth M. St. Lezin, MD
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