Zeroing in on the root cause of the clots in a blood bag: Reinforcing improvement in blood collection practices.

Abstract

Blood clots in the packed red blood cell [PRBC] unit can sometimes go unrecognized and could eventually give rise to the flow problems while administering the same. We herein report our observation of a moderately elongated threadlike clot in a PRBC unit prepared from a whole blood donated by a young male Indian donor.\xa0The PRBC unit\xa0was returned to us from the ward by the nursing staff citing flow issues . In fact, this warranted the initiation of a root-cause analysis of the entire event led by two faculty members, one post-graduate and one technical supervisor in our blood centre.