Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion
The blood centre was started in the year 1999 and the Department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion (IHBT) came into existence on 1st August 2017 under the aegis of the Swami Rama Himalayan University. The department supports the Himalayan Hospital, a NABH accredited, 1200 bedded tertiary care referral centre and nearby hospitals in and around the Dehradun district. Our major goal is to promote the rational use of blood components and offer safer blood transfusion practices by adopting state-of-the-art technologies. The annual blood collected at our facility almost ranges from 11,000 to 13,000 units with more than 80% collections from voluntary donations. We have a good voluntary donor base from several NGOs and nearby industries (with an average of 70 to 80 camps conducted annually). The greater participation of female voluntary blood donors (nearly 5 to 7%) is a good reflector of the efficacious promotional activities of the department regarding the importance of voluntary blood donation. Our blood transfusion services are integrated with the healthcare system of the hospital and provide nearly 25,000 to 30,000 units of blood components annually.
The use of blood is optimized by 100% component separation and a good inventory of blood products is ensured through regularly conducted donor motivational as well as recruitment drives. The clinical services of our department include donor apheresis, therapeutic plasma exchange, therapeutic phlebotomy, autologous platelet-rich plasma, transfusion support with special blood components such as leucodepleted, irradiated, saline-washed, minor phenotype matched and reconstituted whole blood for use in neonatal exchange transfusions. The hematopoietic stem cell harvest is performed using apheresis wherein the transfusion medicine specialist plays an active role in the bone marrow transplant (BMT) team in the hospital. A range of immuno-haematological tests has been standardized, such as type and screen, antibody screening and identification using commercially available panel cells, elution, and adsorption studies. Additionally, the laboratory work-up of patients having allo and autoimmune hemolytic anaemia, hemolytic disease of newborns and antenatal serology is done routinely.
Our laboratory houses three fully automated testing platforms to perform blood grouping, antibody screening, pre-transfusion testing and the screening of transfusion-transmissible infections by the 4th generation ELISA along with individual nucleic acid amplification testing (ID-NAT). Our facility is the first blood centre in Uttarakhand to have started providing ID-NAT-tested blood to the needy and a massive blood transfusion protocol for massively bleeding patients. For such endeavours, the NACO-assisted regional training centre award was bestowed upon us, to train the medical officers, nurses, technicians, and blood donor counsellors for other blood centres in Uttarakhand. Further, our faculty and residents are actively involved in BMT and neonate-haematology clinics apart from conducting several research projects of both extra-mural and intra-mural nature.
Additionally, we also conduct regular educational programs such as workshops and training for MBBS, MD graduates and students from other disciplines such as nursing and medical laboratory technology. The core curriculum while training them involves both laboratory-based and clinical aspects of transfusion medicine. Recently, the National medical commission has permitted three M.D. seats in IHBT. The data management of our blood centre is facilitated using dedicated software. Our facility also participates in the National hemovigilance program of India with prompt reporting of both transfusion reactions and donor-related adverse events. As a part of quality assurance in blood banking, our facility actively participates in both internal and external quality assessment schemes (EQAS) as well.
Our Team
Dr. Dushyant Singh Gaur
Professor
Dr. Manish Raturi
Associate Professor
Dr. Yashaswi Dhiman
Assistant Professor
