Blood shortage leads to urgent plea for donors in Pittsburgh
Two Sundays ago Dr. Allan Philp handled a major trauma case at Allegheny General Hospital.
“It was a terrible car accident,” Dr. Philp said. “A terrible set of injuries.”
The patient desperately needed blood, so much that Dr. Philp had to turn to the facility’s in-house supply of type O, the universal donor. Just like that, the 50 units on hand were used up — and then some.
“We blew through 80 or 100 units of product,” Dr. Philp, the hospital’s chief trauma surgeon, recalled Saturday. “I would say it exhausted it and had to be resupplied from the central facility.”
Hospitals from coast to coast are experiencing the same pressures.
The pandemic has strained the nation’s blood supply. Trauma centers and blood collection agencies are keenly aware that they’re one major disaster away from demand outpacing supply.
“This is unprecedented,” said Lisa Landis, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross’s Greater Pennsylvania Region. “We are on the cusp. If it goes any further, people may die.”
The organization, which provides 40% of the nation’s blood supply, has issued a “historic” plea for donations, Ms. Landis said. It’s even resorted to giving away a trip to the Super Bowl to encourage donations.
Groups like the Red Cross and Vitalant, which supplies blood to the Allegheny Health Network and UPMC systems, ideally want a four- or five-day supply of blood products on hand.
“Over the past few weeks. we have not had more than a one-day supply,” Ms. Landis said.
During the pandemic, donations tanked as the country went on lockdown, and schools, businesses, houses of worship and civic organizations that usually opened their doors to blood drives were closed.
The Red Cross calculated a 62%
drop in blood drives at schools and colleges during the course of the pandemic. And donations by the usually reliable Generation Z shrank to 10% of all donations from 25% in 2019, according to Ms. Landis.
Wariness during the pandemic has caused reluctance among donors to be around others while giving blood for fear of catching COVID-19. Some weren’t sure if they could donate due to prior infections of the novel coronavirus or if they were vaccinated (the answer to both is yes, you can donate, though not while sick).
And while elective surgeries were canceled early in the pandemic,
limiting the need for blood, hospitals eventually were stressed by an increasing number of gunshot victims, car crashes and industrial accidents. That, Ms. Landis said, led to a 10% increase in requests from trauma centers over the summer.
Also, blood banks can only collect so much. Whole blood has a shelf life of 42 days — from donation to processing to distribution.
“It’s not as if this can be stockpiled or manufactured or come from any source other than healthy, well donors,” Ms. Landis said.
Even before COVID-19 struck the U.S. in March 2020, the number
of donors was already dwindling, said Kristen Lane, a spokeswoman for Vitalant in Pittsburgh.
To fulfill its commitments to the AHN and UPMC systems, Vitalant needs about 600 donors per day. Before the pandemic, there were half as many. And the advent of the delta and omicron variants pushed those numbers even lower.
Blood is used to treat any range of medical issues. One person needs blood every two seconds in the U.S., Ms. Landis said.
Cancer patients must have their platelets replaced during chemotherapy. People undergoing transplants require transfusions. Those suffering from trauma might require massive amounts of blood, such as Dr. Philp’s patient.
Managing blood supply is a complex logistical ballet involving donors, blood collection agencies and hospitals, which must constantly monitor their supplies and match them with their needs. A major trauma case can disrupt the delicate balance.
“It’s not like stocking the shelves at Target. We don’t know what our consumers are going to need,” Ms. Lane said.
There are constant unknowns. How many babies will be born who need blood transfusions? How many sickle-cell anemia patients? Car crash and gunshot victims?
The blood shortage has kept clinicians like Dr. Philp worrying about the what ifs. What if a mass casualty event were to happen? Would there be enough blood?
“I’m not sure we could meet that need,” Dr. Philp said. It could be, in a word, “disastrous.”
Right now, though, Dr. Philp has a more pressing concern: the weather. The snowstorm predicted to hammer the region starting Sunday could disrupt shipments of blood supplies, he said.
“In my experience, I’ve never seen it like this. This is a first, in a very negative way,” Dr. Philp, who served as a combat surgeon in Afghanistan and Iraq, said of the shortage. “We’ve had periods where it was close, but never this close.”