During the manufacture of platelets and plasma components, red blood cells (rRBCs) may also end up in the product to a varying degree.
Due to their potential to cause adverse clinical effects, enumeration of rRBCs is required to ensure compliance with quality monitoring (QM) guidelines, but there is no standard method to do this.
Similarly, the specific role of rRBC-platelet interactions on platelet quality is unknown.
Using a Sysmex XN-series analyser with the Blood Bank (BB) mode software we have been able to assess a simple and robust method to enumerate rRBCs, and to examine their effect on the quality of PCs.
Assessment of the BB mode rRBC counting technology demonstrated performance characteristics acceptable for use in NHSBT’s QM environment.
This work will enable assessment of levels of RBC in components to aid risk assessment as part of our work on Universal Platelets.