On 11-12 May, the IX Republican Congress of Transfusiologists and Haematologists took place in Minsk. The event was dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the blood service in the Republic of Belarus.
The rich programme of the event included the following topics: current trends in the production of drugs from blood plasma, topical issues of clinical haematology and haemostasis, new diagnostic and treatment trends in paediatric oncohematology, cell therapy and biomedical cell products, extreme and disaster medicine, clinical transfusiology.
Andrey Kolesov, Head of the Blood Transfusion Centre at the Almazov Centre, took part in the first session on the organisation of donations, modern blood management technologies, infectious safety and blood quality control with a presentation entitled «Multicomponent donation». He emphasised that maintaining an adequate supply of blood components for clinical needs remains one of the most pressing issues in healthcare practice. The importance of developing the principles of lean blood component production is dictated by several circumstances. Firstly, the ageing of the population is leading to a reduction in the pool of available donors. Secondly, the cost of sophisticated blood service equipment, consumables and reagents is increasing the cost of blood components.
According to the expert, the solution is to obtain several blood components from one donor (multicomponent donation). In this case, multicomponent apheresis involves obtaining either two or more identical or two or more different blood components from one donor. The second definition is currently the global trend in transfusiology.