Vitalant welcomes Dr. Sierra Simmons as the new Vitalant Field Medical Director for our Southwest Division hospitals.

The use of group A plasma during the early resuscitation of adult trauma patients is a rapidly growing practice.

In recent years, the use of group A – instead of AB – plasma during the initial resuscitation of adult trauma patients has gained support. A comprehensive survey published in 2016 found that 63-percent of participating American Level 1 trauma centers were using group A plasma to support the transfusion needs of their trauma patients having unknown blood types.

For those facilities who have already transitioned to the customer portal (all hospitals areas except Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New Jersey), ordering Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) product is easier than ever. Vitalant can accept HLA product requests electronically. In fact, using the customer portal is the preferred method for receiving these requests and allows Vitalant to process HLA requests more effectively and efficiently for our customers.

Vitalant provides platelets with the longest potential shelf life available to hospitals without secondary testing.

Large Volume Delayed Sampling (LVDS) 48-hour/7-day platelet products are now fully licensed and available for all Vitalant hospital partner locations.

Today, the largest nationwide SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence survey, funded by the CDC and supported by 17 blood collection organizations representing blood donations from across all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, published its latest findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The San Francisco VA Medical Center has been a long-time advocate of hospitals hosting blood drives. The organization has hosted four blood drives per year for decades, most recently under the leadership of Dr. St. Lezin, Professor of Laboratory Medicine, Assistant Chief Laboratory Medicine & Director of Transfusion Services.

Pregnancy doesn’t always go as expected. In a worst-case scenario, some women experience what’s known as an ectopic pregnancy, a rare complication that can cause severe bleeding and death within the blink of an eye.

Vitalant began manufacturing pooled cryoprecipitate (pooled cryo) from plasma frozen within 24 hours. Adding this manufacturing option will help alleviate ongoing pooled cryo inventory pressures.