I've blogged in the past on making apheresis donations to the San Diego Blod Bank.  In that post I discussed how the blood bank tries to ensure you always make a two unit donation of some form.  Since that post I had a couple updates.  The first is that I'm regularly finding myself as a double platlet donor.  This means I can potentially donate every two weeks, but more importantly it means that about every other donation (3 donations out of 4) I actually am a triple unit donor.  That's pretty cool, but I've also learned some more details of the advantages of this method of donation.

The first things I learned was that while I knew that platlets are used to help cancer patients and red cells are used for  anemia, blood during surgery etc, but I wondered what plasma was used for?  Turns out one of the primary uses of Plasma is for the treatment of severe burns.  Burn victims need additional blood volume because their bodies are essentially taking that liquid portion of their blood and using it to help rebuild damaged skin etc.  Since plasma makes up the majority of your actual blood volume having transfusions of it on hand can allow your boddy to heal faster.  I also learned that Plasma was one of the longest lasting blood products in terms of how long the blood bank can store it.

More importantly however is the second thing I learned.  While I'm type 0 which makes my red blood cells very valuable, Plasma works in the opposite fashion.  Thus people who are type AB whose blood type is fairly rare can make universal Plasma donations.  These plasma donations are then available to people of any blood type.  So remember regardless of your blood type, the local blood bank (whether the American Red Cross or San Diego Blood Bank here in San Diego) is pretty much in constant need of a donation of your blood.  After all ~95% of people will habe a blood donation at some point in their life, even though only ~5% of the population actually donates.