eric76 said:
SoulSlaveAG2005 said:
Doc- and any other docs on this board.
We have seen about a 3-4x increase in orders for convalescent plasma over the past 2 weeks.
Any chance you would be willing to help reach out to your patients that are known recovered and help refer them to donate?
I'm happy to provide instructions. As this isn't a typical type of donor, we really need some help from those treating patients to get donors across the threshold.
I have a question about the convalescent plasma.
When I gave blood a couple of weeks ago, I showed them my release from isolation letter in case they might want to go for convalescent plasma instead. They just took my blood normally. Is there any difference in how you collect blood for convalescent plasma?
Logging onto their web site, I see that I'm not eligible to donate blood (or plasma) again until mid August. If I do have enough antibodies to make it worthwhile at present, how likely will that be in August?
Yes. Convalescent plasma is being drawn via apheresis. Most blood centers are utilizing either a Trima or Alyx machine to collect the plasma. It works by separating youR red cells and plasma in a single use kit, and returns the red cells back into your vein. Basically pulling plasma concentrate from you.
Whole blood is further processed by separation but doesn't have the same volume we can draw with apheresis. Our blood center has only validated convalescent plasma drawn via apheresis, so if we draw a recovered donors whole blood, we can't label the separated plasma as convalescent plasma. We are exploring it though due to antibody testing hopefully opening up some more donors to us.
Most centers also require you to pre register as convalescent plasma. That might be why they couldn't do anything at your last donation. We have to pre qualify every CVPLS donor by storing a copy of their positive test in their file. You should be able
To donate plasma 14-28 days from your last whole
Blood donation. You may want to give them a call and see if there is a pre qualifying process.
In regards to your antibody titer. No one really knows what the levels will be 30/60/90 days from recovery. We are storing a segment from each donation and subsequent donations so that our docs can study that question later down the road.
I have had 4 donors each make it to their 3rd donation (30/60/90 days from recovery) and I have not had any doc complain about the efficacy of the treatment based on any particular unit.