title: A technique to reduce lymphocyte contamination of plateletapheresis products collected with a centrifugal blood cell separator.
abstract: It is desirable to minimize the contamination of plateletapheresis products by lymphocytes because of the role these cells may play in febrile nonhemolytic transfusion reactions, alloimmunization, platelet deterioration during storage and also to reduce donor lymphocyte loss. This study attempted to determine whether lymphocyte contamination could be reduced by rapidly depleting plasma from the separation chamber at selected intervals during plateletapheresis with a blood cell separator (CS-3000, Fenwal). Donors who provided platelet components with more than 0.10 X 10(9) lymphocytes without rapid depletion underwent a second plateletapheresis procedure in which the rapid depletion technique was used. The plasma pump was reprogrammed to remove rapidly 12 ml of plasma from the separation chamber (pump speed 48 ml/min) immediately after the plasma pump reversal. All other collection techniques were identical for all procedures. Significantly fewer lymphocytes were collected in those procedures in which rapid depletion was used (mean, 0.187 X 10(9] than when it was not used (mean, 0.331 X 10(9] (p = 0.001, n = 30). There was no effect on platelet yield, efficiency of platelet collection, processing time, or total collection time. This procedure provides a product that should be considered for routine use.
mesh_terms: D001781:Blood Component Removal; D001793:Blood Preservation; D002469:Cell Separation / Q000295:instrumentation; D006801:Humans; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D008214:Lymphocytes; D010983:Plateletpheresis