Not as much blood needed now for transfusions

Less blood in needed to save lives say NZ Blood service.

Thanks to new medical techniques, less blood is needed to save Kiwi lives, says NZ Blood service.

Every month NZ Blood Service, based in Palmerston North, makes its way to Whanganui for a two-day blood drive.

Over that time an approximate average of 160 locals give roughly 80 litres of blood.
But now less blood is needed, and the monthly blood drive visit has been scaled back from a two-day event to just one.

"Over the past 20 years we've learnt a lot about what the body needs," said a NZ Blood spokeswoman.

She said as medical knowledge has improved medical practitioners have become aware that the body often needs less blood in a transfusion to make a recovery.

"We now prefer that the patient recovers their blood supply naturally. It's often better for the patient."

Part of this new mantra stems from the understanding that blood transfusions carry risks, similar to those of an organ transplant.

"There was once a time where we would give blood after a birth if there had been some bleeding."

"Now the requirements are much higher before we would consider that - a significant haemorrhage, for example."

New hospital machines allow medical staff to recover blood lost during surgeries and feed it back into the patient.

"This was done in response to people like like Jehovahs' Witnesses who couldn't use [donated blood]. What we were discovering is they were recovering quicker. So these people would often get less blood back, but because it was their own blood they would recover in 24 hours instead of, say, five days."

She says with the changes in medical procedures come a change in the way the service communicates with the public.

"We can communicate with people using things like apps or email. So say we could send out the call saying 'we urgently need this type of rare blood' and within 24 hours we would have it," she says.

This month's blood drive will be held at the War Memorial Centre on April 18 from 1pm until 5.30pm If you would like to donate to the NZ Blood Service, contact 0800 448 325.