Sickle Cell Disease and Blood Donations and Transfusions
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Seethal Jacob
In this program:
What should sickle cell disease patients know about blood donations and transfusions? Watch as expert Dr. Seethal Jacob explains how blood donations and transfusions help with reducing risk of sickle cell disease complications and which population groups are especially needed to donate blood.
Transcript
Interviewer:
When we think of curative therapies Dr. Jacob, where would you rank blood transfusions especially in this day and age of COVID-19. How is that affecting blood transfusions? What's the process?
Dr. Seethal Jacob:
Absolutely, sure. Blood transfusions can definitely be life-saving for sickle cell patients. It can also be important to reduce sort of the morbidity or the risk of stroke in our patients with sickle cell disease, blood transfusions can be used, how we say chronically, so typically every month or so to help prevent most commonly, to help prevent stroke in those who have had stroke or at high risk for stroke, but also to help prevent some other complications that patients with sickle cell disease may have, those who may have recurring acute chest syndrome, for example, those who have severe anemia that may also be seeing leg ulcers or low oxygen levels sometimes can be placed on chronic transfusions as well. It, however, does not actually cure them from having sickle cell disease. It decreases the amount of sickle hemoglobin that they have in their blood, so that there are less complications but they still have sickle cell, and if they were to stop blood transfusions, that risk of those complications comes right back. In the age of COVID, where we are at risk of low blood supply because of less frequent donations it does make it difficult, and we've certainly had patients who have had to stretch out the frequency of their blood transfusions just because there wasn't enough.
And we've had patients who have had to miss their monthly transfusion because of not having enough blood available to them, which is just another opportunity to say, if you can and if you are willing to go out and donate blood because it can be life-saving for our patients with sickle cell disease.
Interviewer:
And then at the last medication is crizanlizumab, an IV medication that's been aOkay, and from...this is off-topic, doesn't matter what blood type you are if you're thinking about donating blood?
Dr. Seethal Jacob:
Yeah, that's a great question. It does not matter what blood type you are, any blood type, please donate, because our sickle cell patients have all sorts of blood types, particularly if you are of African or Indian or Hispanic descent, please donate. Those are the populations that tend to have sickle cell disease and need blood transfusions, and unfortunately, our blood donation pool typically does not have as much blood product from those populations, and so if you can, please do so...
Interviewer:
I'm based in the UK, you're in the United States. It may vary from country to country. Say, for instance, I was in the U.S. and I wanted to go donate, when I just show up to a hospital or a clinic or center, can you just sort of speak to how and when... How can they go about doing that?
Dr. Seethal Jacob:
Great question. So if anyone were to pull up the American Red Cross on their phones or on their laptop, or if they were to call their local blood bank, they can set up an appointment very easily. A lot of blood banks, you can set up right from your phone online, and schedule an appointment, and then you walk into the blood bank when it's time, and they will take care of everything from there. But if you ever have any questions, you can always search for your local blood bank online or give them a call, and they're happy to help.
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