[aclug-L] NYTimes.com Article: Red Cross Shuts Off Much of Georgia's Blood Supply

[jlweaver@xxxxxxx]

This article from NYTimes.com 
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It is scary to think that this might be more widespread than reported......

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Red Cross Shuts Off Much of Georgia's Blood Supply

February 1, 2003
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER 




 

ATLANTA, Jan. 31 - A mysterious white substance found
floating in bags of donated blood here led the American Red
Cross today to quarantine nearly its entire blood supply
for Georgia and parts of South Carolina. 

The Red Cross is by far the largest blood supplier in
Georgia, and the development prompted scores of hospitals
to cancel operations until blood could be brought in from
outside the region. 

No harmful effects on patients were reported, and Red Cross
officials said early tests showed that the white substance,
which ranged in size from microscopic particles to visible
strands and globules as large as BB's, was neither
bacterial nor infectious. 

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention both began investigating.
But the identity of the substance remained a mystery, and
confusion only grew as the day wore on. 

Red Cross officials in Atlanta pointed to the blood bags as
the likely source of the material, while the manufacturer
of the bags said its own tests showed that the substance
was probably blood-related. But no one's tests pinpointed
exactly what it was, or even might be. 

F.D.A. officials, Red Cross executives and medical experts
said they could not recall another quarantine of blood
supplies that was so wide-ranging. The Red Cross blood
system based here covers 140 hospitals across Georgia and
in Beaufort and Hilton Head, S.C. 

The quarantine effectively reduced the Atlanta blood
center's inventory to zero, said J. Chris Hrouda, chief
executive for blood services for the Southern region of the
Red Cross. It followed by less than a month a public appeal
for blood donations because the center's supply had fallen
to just a day's average demand. 

The Atlanta blood bank typically imports from other regions
about 25 percent of the blood it distributes. But because
of the quarantine here, those imports are being temporarily
stepped up: other Red Cross regions shipped 600 units of
blood to Atlanta early today, another 600 were on the way,
and all told 2,000 units were expected to arrive over the
weekend. 

The Atlanta center collects blood from donors in Georgia
and northern Florida, and processes 1,200 500-milliliter
units of it a day, separating it into its components and
repackaging it into packed red blood cells, platelets,
fresh-frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate, or clotting
proteins. 

At a news conference here, Mr. Hrouda said a laboratory
technician working an overnight shift spotted the white
substance sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday. By late
today, he said, 4,000 units of blood had been examined, and
the white substance had been found in 110 of them. Dr.
Christopher D. Hillyer, an Emory University medical
professor who is an expert on transfusions and works with
the Red Cross, said that the particles were almost
translucent and that they did not seem to have come from a
living organism. 

This morning an "urgent notification" was sent to all
hospitals that receive the Atlanta center's blood. It said
the "white particulate matter" had been discovered both in
packages of red blood cells and in plasma bags. Mr. Hrouda
confirmed that at least one hospital had received blood
that had the white substance, though he would not identify
that hospital. 

The notice said bags with codes beginning "003," the
Atlanta processing center's code, should be quarantined and
used only in emergencies, and then only after being laid
flat and observed for 5 or 10 minutes to check "for white
specks or aggregate strands." 

Mr. Hrouda said the white material could not have been
introduced by the blood center, because the bags were
sealed shut from the time a donor's vein was tapped and
throughout the separation process, right up to the time the
blood's components were put to use in a recipient patient.
"Preliminary tests indicate," he said, "that the problem
was likely associated with the blood collection bags and
not the blood itself." 

Red Cross officials said the 110 units of blood found to
include the substance came from 18 lots of bags, all made
by the Fenwal division of the Baxter Healthcare
Corporation, a subsidiary of Baxter International Inc. But
a spokeswoman for Baxter Healthcare, based in Deerfield,
Ill., said the company had done its own preliminary tests
on four samples and found nothing wrong with the bags
themselves. 

"We identified a substance in there as biological in nature
and most likely blood-related," said the spokeswoman,
Deborah Spak. 

The dispute only became more confused when Dr. Hillyer said
late today that the shipment of the four samples to Baxter
had apparently jostled the blood so much that Baxter
technicians had been unable to spot the white particles
inside. 

Finally, late this afternoon, F.D.A. officials said the
Baxter bags used in Atlanta had been shipped here from Red
Cross locations that had switched to newer bags. But while
the bags carrying the problem blood were old, said Dr.
Leslie Holness, an F.D.A. medical officer, they still had
not reached their expiration date, three years after
manufacture. 

The effects of the quarantine were being felt all over
Georgia. In Gainesville, an emergency blood drive was set
for Saturday after 70 units of blood were quarantined at
Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Like other hospitals that
do not use Red Cross blood, St. Joseph's Hospital in
Atlanta said it was prioritizing surgical operations to
avoid depleting the community's blood supply. 

At Piedmont Hospital here, 85 operations had been scheduled
for today, and 14 were canceled because they required
transfusions. Gene Mullis, 54, was supposed to have a
quadruple coronary bypass this morning. 

"They were prepping me for surgery and had given me my
first sedative," said Mr. Mullis, an Atlantan who works for
the Environmental Protection Agency. "And just as we were
rolling into the operating room, the surgeon said we had to
stop because we had gotten notification that the blood was
possibly contaminated. I wasn't really upset about it,
because I didn't want contaminated blood." 

Mr. Mullis, who plans to retire in 11 months, said his
surgery had been rescheduled for Monday. This afternoon he
learned he had become the grandfather of a nine-pound baby
boy, born at another local hospital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/01/health/01BLOO.html?ex=1045114117&ei=1&en=b61b57699e18be79



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