Transfusion in Motion: 3 Critical Factors in the Prehospital Transfusion Era

Prehospital transfusion—administering blood products in the field—is transforming trauma care. For blood bank professionals, this shift creates new challenges and opportunities. Here's what your lab team should consider as prehospital transfusion becomes more common.

1. Streamlining the Transfusion Transition

When trauma patients receive blood products in the field, their survival chances improve dramatically. Prehospital teams typically use universal donor products due to time constraints, but this practice creates a unique handoff scenario for your lab. Once these patients reach the hospital, your team must quickly determine blood type and perform compatibility testing to transition them to type-specific units, keeping in mind that field-based transfusion may affect the pre-transfusion testing results.

Is your lab workflow optimized for these scenarios? A dedicated "prehospital transfusion pathway" prioritizing rapid typing and antibody screening can ensure seamless care for these patients.

2. Managing Blood Inventory Challenges

Let's face it—Group O blood is already liquid gold in most hospitals. When prehospital programs start pulling from the same supply, inventory management becomes even more critical. Successful labs are developing closer relationships with their blood suppliers and emergency services partners.

Setting up real-time data sharing and notification systems for incoming transfused patients helps your team prepare appropriate products and adjust inventory forecasts. Designating specific O-negative units for prehospital use, with clear rotation protocols, minimizes waste while ensuring field teams have what they need.

3. Ensuring Quality and Collaboration

Blood products administered in a speeding ambulance or dusty helicopter don't always receive the same care as those in your controlled lab environment. This creates potential quality and compliance challenges that proactive labs are addressing head-on, by doing things like providing transport teams with validated coolers.

When these patients arrive, verification of storage conditions and reconciliation of transfusion records becomes your responsibility—creating processes to capture this information efficiently protects both patients and your regulatory compliance. Partnering with emergency services to standardize field transfusion protocols ensures proper documentation, temperature control, and product handling.

What's Next for Your Lab?

As prehospital transfusion expands, hospital labs are vital in connecting field care to hospital treatment. Keep open communication channels with your emergency medicine colleagues to position your team as partners in developing or refining these lifesaving protocols.