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Blood Tranfusions - Obsolete July 2022

Checked: 25-09-2020 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 31-03-2022

Blood Tranfusions - General advice

Blood transfusions may be required in patients with severe anaemia or symptomatic anaemia.

As a guide NBT advise the following:

Requests for blood transfusions should be considered in patients with:

Hb < 70g/l

Hb < 80g/l with history of cardiovascular disease or with symptoms e.g. chest pain, breathlessness, hypotension, tachycardia, cardiac failure. (consider discussion with Weekday IUC Professional Line if immediate concerns).

Requests for transfusions should be made directly to the appropriate day unit (see referral section below) except in the following patients:

Oncology patients requiring transfusion should be discussed with the appropriate oncology team or via the on call oncologist.

Renal patients requiring transfusion should be discussed with the renal team at Southmead hospital.

Iron Infusions

For patients with iron deficiency anaemia where oral treatments have not been successful or are not tolerated, iron infusion may be more appropriate and referrals can be made to either UHB or NBT. Please see the Pathology Services page for details.

The anaemia section in gastroenterology chapter of Remedy also has details on investigation of anaemia.

Referral

Please see the Pathology page of Remedy for advice on referral for blood transfusions at UHB and NBT.

All referrals are triaged and then the patient contacted by the hospital to arrange the transfusion. Cross matches should be done within 48 hours of the planned transfusion and must be correctly labelled.

Blood transfusions in the Community - North Somerset only

Community Blood Transfusions are currently only available to patients registered with a North Somerset GP and are given at Clevedon Community Hospital.

Clinical guidance on when a patient is suitable for blood transfusion is available via NBT: Bristol Blood / Blood Component Transfusion Guideline 2017

Additionally, for a patient to receive a blood transfusion in the community, the patient should have had:

At least one transfusion in the acute setting with no severe reactions
Two previous group and antibody screen tests (UHBristol, WGH or NBT).

How to refer:

The NS Blood Transfusion Patient Specific Direction form is available, in North Somerset GP Practices, as an EMIS template

Please see the GP Referral Protocol

Send referrals to Sirona care & health Single Point of Access (SPA) Email: sirch.northsomersetspa@nhs.net Tel: 0300 125 6789

For referral advice or guidance contact the Sirona care & health IV service on 07500 225283 / 01275 546992

or NBT Specialist Practitioner of Transfusion on 07718 575469 / 0117 4148358

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.