Quality Control Assessment of Platelet Concentrates in Blood Bank

Abstract

Background: Quality assessment of platelet concentrates is an important step to evaluate ex-vivo functional viability of platelet concentrates. This study aimed to assess the in vitro viability and to evaluate the quality and activation of platelets during storage. Patients and Methods: The study was conducted on 60 platelet concentrate bags at different days of storage, 15 were single donor platelets and the rest were random donor platelets. All the PCs were subjected to quality control parameters including: pH, platelet count, WBC count, swirling, glucose level, LDH level and assessment of CD62P (P-selectin) by flowcytometry. Results: Both preparations fulfilled the desired quality control criteria of swirling and pH levels in which it should be more than 6.0 at the end of maximum days of storage in all the studied bags. The results fulfilled the quality requirement for platelet count in SD-PC which is for minimum 2x10¹¹ per unit and also in WBC count of SD -PC which is preferred to be <0.3x10⁹ per unit and in RD-PC <1x10⁹ per unit in all the studied bags. Activation of platelets was higher in RDP than SDP as CD62P level higher in RDP. Conclusions: SDP is better for transfusion than RDP as it fulfilled the quality control criteria regarding the platelet count, TLC, pH and swirling, while RDP fulfilled the criteria in TLC, pH and swirling but not as regards platelet count.