The need for blood substitutes

Why do we need blood substitutes?

Public concern over the safety of transfusion and the impact of reduced blood donations is leading to annual shortages in blood. Shortages are an increasing problem and have worsened over recent years as a result of many factors, such as:

This is driving the search to find effective solutions to the associated solutions with transfusion, examples of which are shown below:

Problematic aspect of transfusion Potential solution Drawback to solution
Exposure to 'foreign' donated blood Use pre-deposited blood from the patient, or blood that is salvaged during operations Some patients are unable to donate their own blood (e.g. if anaemic). Still have problems of storage
Human error: Administration of incorrect blood type Use of computers and barcodes to label donations Computer systems are very expensive and computers can also make mistakes
Human error:
Unnecessary transfusions
 Educating specific staff - Specialist transfusion practitioners Education and payment of specialist staff is expensive. Also, transfusions will always be necessary sometimes
Infected blood donations Testing and screening donors for disease. Processing donations to remove disease-transmitting blood components Test refusal by donors. Results of test could invalidate life insurance policies. Processing of donations is expensive and never 100% effective

 

Many of these solutions are effective options and are currently being put into practice. For example, there are now specialist transfusion practitioners in over 40 UK hospitals.

In emerging countries, however, where the funding for effective medical services may be a problem, such solutions are not feasible. The expense of procedures such as screening for viruses in blood donations is already a problematic issue.

It has now been realised that there is a strong case for the development of 'blood substitutes' since an effective substitute could, in principle, solve problems associated with using donated blood for transfusion.