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The Young and Healthy Podcast.
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You’re listening to the Cincinnati Children’s Young and Healthy Podcast.
Kayla McNeal
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Young and Healthy Podcast. I’m your host, Kayla McNeal, and usually I’m behind the scenes producing the podcast, but today, for the second time, I’m stepping in front of the mic for a conversation that’s incredibly important for patients and families alike. Today, we’re going to be talking about blood donation, why it matters, how blood banks support hospitals like Cincinnati Children’s, and the real life-saving impact that donated blood has on kids every single day. It’s one of those topics that many of us don’t think about until we need it, but for so many families, access to safe, available blood can make all the difference. So to help us explore this topic a little bit more, I’m joined by two wonderful experts, Dr. Kristina Prus, Director of Transfusion Medicine. Dr. Prus, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us just a little bit about your role here?
Dr. Kristina Prus
Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I’m so excited to talk about this incredibly important topic. So I, as you said, I’m the director of transfusion medicine, which essentially means all day, every day, I make sure that the blood going to our patients is safe. What that means is that we’re going to be making sure that the right products are going to the right patients and that we’re not giving products to patients when they don’t need them. Because doing a blood transfusion can sometimes be just as important as not doing a blood transfusion. So really, I work with an amazing team in the lab. It’s not just me. We have an amazing array of laboratory technologists who help do all the testing. We have a technical specialist who is in charge of making sure to review all the testing and making sure we’re doing everything appropriately as well. And then, of course, we have the rest of our medical director team and our background administration as well, including my partner over here.
Kayla McNeal
Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Prus. We are also joined by Emily Kimball, a physician outreach consultant. Emily, thank you so much too for being here with us. Can you let the listeners know a little bit more about your role?
Emily Kimball
I’m also very happy to be here. My role, I’m the primary contact for community providers, so community pediatrician offices regarding lab, specific to the lab. regarding lab results and routing of lab results. But part of my job is coordinating the blood drives. And I work with a representative at Hoxworth to plan and coordinate the blood drives. And yeah, so I’m excited to share more about what we do and the importance of blood donors.
Kayla McNeal
Wonderful. Well, again, thank you both for being here. So to start us off, What should we know about blood and blood donation as a starting point for this conversation?
Emily Kimball
I’ll start with that. So we partner with Hoxworth as our primary blood supplier. So when you donate blood with Hoxworth, you’re saving lives close to home. And I coordinate blood drives. We have monthly blood drives on the Burnett campus in the Sabin Auditorium. And we also have blood drives throughout the year on other Cincinnati children’s campuses. Probably most frequently would be Liberty. We also have blood drives at Vernon Manor and College Hill and other locations when we can.
Dr. Kristina Prus
And I’d also like to jump in as well. I think kind of level setting for everyone, blood transfusions are something that we all kind of think occur, and we don’t really think about them too much, right? Like your doctor comes in, your nurse practitioner comes in, and they say, hey, you need some blood, and you just think, oh, great, we’ll just get that along with my Tylenol and whatever other medication I’m getting. But really, it’s important to remember that we have people like Emily because blood drives are so desperately needed. Blood products, And I’m not just talking about red blood cells, but all the different components of blood products, they come only from people. We can’t get them from anywhere else. We’ve not been able to manufacture that at all. And so unfortunately, unlike medications where a company in somewhere makes it in a factory, all of our blood comes from amazing donors in our own community. And so that’s something that we can’t just replace if people don’t show up.
Kayla McNeal
Right, exactly. And kind of going off of the community aspect. For listeners who may not know, and this is a question too that just came into my mind because I was like, oh, I don’t exactly know what that is. What actually is Hoxworth? How does that tie into the blood donation component here at Cincinnati Children’s? Absolutely.
Dr. Kristina Prus
So Hoxworth is a blood center that is on the University of Cincinnati campus. So just across the street from us, not far whatsoever. And they’re actually the oldest blood center in America, which is pretty cool. I’m going to do a tiny plug. They’re doing a really fun giveaway next month that kind of celebrates that as well. So definitely go check that out. But yeah, but they’re right across the street. They’re affiliated with the University of Cincinnati, which also makes them really unique. in that they’re an academic blood center. So they actively are doing research. They have people in the blood center who are only doing research. And then they have people sort of like me who have had similar training, but they all day, every day, make sure that the blood that they’re collecting is safe as opposed to the blood that’s being given to patients. Because it’s the same blood, but they’re more on the donor side and I’m more on the patient side.
Kayla McNeal
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. On your side, can you explain why blood donation is so important for hospitals like Cincinnati Children’s?
Emily Kimball
Yes, so Cincinnati Children’s gets all of their blood from Hoxworth. So coordinating these blood drives with Hoxworth, again, gives us our supply as well as the other blood drives around the city. The coordinator that I work with at Hoxworth also partners with corporations and corporate offices to have blood drives. So there’s lots of opportunities out in the community to donate blood. And then of course, Hoxworth has neighborhood locations that you can go to as well. And it’s because we only get our blood from Hoxworth, it’s the more, you know, blood that we can collect locally is the better. And that’s Hawksworth’s tagline is saving lives close to home. And it’s a great one because it’s so true. When you donate at a Hawksworth blood drive or at a neighborhood location, that blood is going to be used at one of the area hospitals, including Children’s Hospital.
Kayla McNeal
Awesome. It sounds like there’s always something going on in in terms of blood donation, blood drive. So when that blood comes in on an average day, how much blood does Cincinnati Children’s use to care for its patients?
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, that’s a great question and one that is near and dear to my heart because we’re always paying attention to making sure we have enough on ourselves to support our patients, which is something we are almost always able to do, which is just incredible. So for our patients over the last couple of years, Roughly about 30 red blood cell units are transfused A day. And so that’s going to be those bags that look red. They are just red blood cells and nothing else in there. We transfuse about 10-ish platelet units a day, which the platelet units are the smaller yellow bags. And then we transfuse roughly around 5 to 8 units of plasma and units of cryo, respectively. And those are sort of the more unique components, because not everyone needs them, but when they are needed, it’s for a very, very specific situation. So we don’t transfuse as many, but it doesn’t mean that they’re any less important. They’re incredibly important, just like everything else.
Kayla McNeal
And I know it’s been mentioned that a lot of the blood comes from Hoxworth. Is that the only place that Cincinnati Children’s receives blood from? And if so, thank you for explaining that. But if not, does it come from other places? And how does it actually get to the hospital? How is the blood transported?
Emily Kimball
Yes, we get all of our blood from Hoxworth. And it is transported by couriers back and forth. We have several courier runs a day that go back and forth between our blood bank at Children’s, Cincinnati Children’s and Hawksworth. Yes, so that’s again why it’s so important for donors. Occasionally you might see something in the news about how Hawksworth is critically low trying to recruit more donors. because they do prefer to collect the blood themselves, test it themselves, et cetera, et cetera. If they don’t have enough blood that’s been donated by local donors, then they have to get it from other blood centers outside of Cincinnati. So it’s just much better. That’s why we are always looking to recruit new donors and always have lots of sign-ups at our blood drives.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, and that’s a really good point too, is that while we’re mostly supplied by Hoxworth, they’re able to collect locally almost everything we need, there are certain cases where they’re not quite able to do that. And that’s just because we just don’t have enough diversity of donors. And so one case that comes to mind are a patient population that have sickle cell disease. So those patients are more likely to have a mismatch with a little protein markers on the outside of the red blood cell as compared to what our actual donated blood looks like. And that’s just based on race and gender. That’s nothing else. And so when we sometimes have these patients who have gotten blood their entire life, because when you have sickle cell disease, you live on blood. Like you don’t make normal red blood cells for the most part. And so you cannot make it through without needing at least some kind of transfusion. And so because of that, those patients are always, always getting these red blood cells. And so sometimes they make so many of these antibodies. So essentially the immune system saying, you gave me someone else’s blood and I know that. So I’m going to make an antibody to this antigen, this protein on the outside of the red blood cell that doesn’t look right to me. And so then going forward, we have to make sure that blood that we transfuse is negative for whatever that antibody is, essentially just trying to prevent the red blood cells from otherwise being destroyed. So there’s no point in even doing that transfusion. And so what we do sometimes is we look at our profiles, and that’s part of what I do and with the rest of our blood bank team. We look at the antibodies, we look at the testing, and we decide, okay, we need to avoid all these different antigens on your red blood cell. And then we go to Hawksworth and say, hi, can you guys help us out? Because they’re not only a blood donor center, they also do their own very specialized testing, even more specialized testing than we’re able to do here at Cincinnati Children’s. And so we will send samples out to them sometimes or we’ll say, hey, we really need this really rare donor unit that maybe only 1% of the population has. Or I think the rarest one I’ve looked for is 0.3% of the population is a match for that particular patient. And so they’ll look in their inventory and I say, great, they’re getting a red cell exchange. They need 8 units. And they say, well, we have three, but we’re going to go to our donor registry. There’s a national donor registry that we’re a part of. And we ask other blood centers doctors, hey, can you please help us out by sending these units that are a match for our patient who has a very rare amount of antigens on their red blood cells that we need to honor. And so the only way really to fix that is to have more donors show up who hopefully have that same antigen profile as our patients who are critically needing this blood. So yeah, so that’s something where we do occasionally have to look outside of our community, but thankfully, most of the time we’re able to support ourselves, which is really, really a wonderful.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to transition back to a phrase, Dr. Proust, that you had said at the top of the episode. You had mentioned blood products. And sometimes we hear that when we’re talking about blood donations and blood banks. What does that actually mean?
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, that’s a great question. So a blood product is essentially something that comes out of a human and we process it and we give it to another human. So that’s probably the very most basic way. Now, when I say blood products, I typically mean red blood cells, platelets, which are the ones that help to stop bleeding, plasma, which has a lot of those proteins that help you, again, to stop bleeding, just in a different way than platelets. And then you have your cryo or cryoprecipitate is the full word. And that again has a very specific piece that allows us to prevent bleeding in patients. There’s different uses for each one and they’re all very specific scenarios. Now we do have some rare products as well. So we can have something called a granulocyte, which tends to be more helpful in children than adults based on the research. And that can help our critically, critically ill patients, the ones that have no immune system left. They are very, very sick. And we need to give them something to try to help jumpstart that immune system to get rid of their infection. And so those really are the main blood products, blood components. There are other, of course, things that can be made from blood that you may have heard of, like things like IVIG and other things. But the ones that I am in charge of, the ones that I think about are the ones that we just talked about.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah, so lots of blood products, lots going on in terms of blood donation and what comes in to Cincinnati Children’s. And I’m sure that people are often surprised to learn how often blood is needed for people. Can you share some examples of situations where transfusions may be required?
Dr. Kristina Prus
Absolutely. So one big scenario I already mentioned is sickle cell disease. Those patients need blood, and by blood, I mean those packed red blood cells, those bags of just the red blood cells. There’s lots of other scenarios, though. Anytime there’s a big trauma, so someone gets into an accident, they may have a laceration, a cut that’s causing a lot of bleeding. What you do, you give a bunch of blood back because you’ve lost it all. And then we also have routine transfusions as well. So our very sick cancer patients, the ones that need a bone marrow transplant, their bone marrows aren’t working quite right. And so because of the medications that we’re giving them to help cure their cancer or whatever else is going on. So they’re going to be needing a lot of those blood products. And sometimes all of those blood products that we mentioned, not just the red blood cells, but they’re actually one of the heaviest users of platelets, which is I think also a really important concept. And then, of course, you have our patients who receive those life-saving organs from other people. So anyone who’s going through an organ transplant is almost assuredly going to need some kind of blood product during their surgery. And that’s not just, again, not just the red blood cells, but really all of those components really come into play.
Emily Kimball
I’d like to add on that, speaking of platelets, something that most people don’t realize is that platelets have a very short shelf life. And so we, at the blood drives that we have at the Burnett campus and the Sabin Auditorium, we always collect platelets at those and the double red cells. If you’re donating on a bus at a Hoxworth bus where you see the Hoxworth bus, they cannot collect platelets at those blood drives. But the benefit of, even though they have a short shelf life with the platelets, is that people who donate platelets can donate every two weeks. Whereas whole blood, I think it’s 16 weeks.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Eight weeks if you’re a whole blood, 16 weeks if you do a double red.
Emily Kimball
Yes. Always need more platelet donors in our donor pool because they have a short shelf life. And as Christina was explaining, when we need, there’s lots of patients that need specifically platelets. And that’s probably the product that we run low on the most, wouldn’t you say? I mean.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Oh yeah, I completely agree. When we’re thinking about shortages or even just managing the inventory, the one that I pay attention to probably the most are gonna be our AB platelets and our O red blood cell units. So yeah, that’s absolutely a great point.
Emily Kimball
And then you can also donate platelets, of course, at the neighborhood Hoxworth centers. So, but it’s just like if you’re donating at a Hoxworth blood drive that’s on a bus, they can’t collect platelets on those. Platelet Donations do take a little bit more time. It’s a bigger time commitment. And sometimes that will deter donors from being able to sign up and donate because it can take up to two hours to collect platelets. Anything else?
Dr. Kristina Prus
But even if you want to be able to contribute, but you say, no, I can’t take that much time or I can’t handle having the needle in my arm for that much longer, which I totally understand because I’m very needle phobic myself. What you can do and what Hawks Earth has started to do most recently, they’re actually one of the first blood donor centers in the country that started to do this, which is also very cool, is that they collect platelets from your whole blood donation and they pool them together to make a platelet unit. So even if you are donating donating whole blood, your platelets might actually still get used to help someone, which is still a wonderful thing. So don’t be discouraged if you say, man, I really want to donate my platelets, but I just can’t handle it. You’re still helping out, even if you’re donating a whole blood or a double red or whatever else it is that you’re coming into to try to donate.
Kayla McNeal
Awesome. And I want to ask a quick question on something that you had mentioned, Emily. You were talking about the shelf life. Do all blood products have the same shelf life?
Emily Kimball
That’s a good question. No, as I mentioned, platelets have the shortest shelf life of five days. And then Dr. Proust can mention, can talk about the shelf life for whole blood.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, absolutely. So plasma has the longest shelf life, plasma and cryo. And that’s because they stay frozen. So we put them in a freezer and they can hang out for a year, which is great. That’s awesome. Red blood cells are much shorter. So those have to be refrigerated and those are about 42 days before they expire. And then of course, as you mentioned, platelets. Platelets expire so quickly because they are kept at room temperature. So we just have them in a really gentle agitator. We essentially like rock them to sleep for, you know, five days while they’re hanging, waiting out to get transfused to someone. And then we go ahead and transfuse them. But yeah, they go really, really quickly, unfortunately.
Kayla McNeal
Well, thank you for answering that. And I know you’d also mentioned people are always looking for ways to donate or just somehow be a part of a blood drive. And a lot of people may know their blood type, but don’t really realize how it affects care. So why are certain blood types especially important, specifically in pediatric medicine?
Dr. Kristina Prus
So there’s a lot of people who can probably say, yeah, O is the universal donor. I’ve heard that before, which is absolutely true to a point. So your red blood cells, yes, you are absolutely the universal donor. I myself am an O negative, so my red blood cells can go to anyone, even if we don’t know what your blood type is. Almost assuredly, you’ll probably be getting an O negative unit if you come into the emergency department. We don’t know what your blood type is and we need to transfuse you quickly because you’re bleeding too much. But it’s the opposite with platelets. So with platelets, a type O would not necessarily be a universal donor. And really it’s the AB platelets that are going to be your universal donor for your platelet units. And the same goes for plasma. And that’s just because of the different proteins that exist within your blood system. So what that means is that when you are a type O, you’re going to not have any A’s or B’s on the outside of your red blood cell. On the other side, if you’re an AB donor, I will have A’s and B’s on my red blood cells, making it to where it’s not going to be able to go to everyone. But if I donate, I’m not going to have those anti-A’s and anti-B’s in the plasma or in the plasma that’s coded in the platelets, because when you donate platelets, they’re stored in your own plasma. And so what’s going to happen is I can give those to anyone because they’re not going to have the anti-A and anti-B that could potentially cause the red blood cells to break apart. If, say, I’m a type A and I’m receiving an AB platelet, it’s going to be great. If I’m a type A and I receive a B platelet, I’m going to get a bunch of anti-As. And that’s not good. We don’t want more of that hemolysis. And a fun fact that I always like to throw out, especially to our medical students and all the other trainees that I get to teach, is that, you know, asking what is the percentage of people who are type type O in the community and what is the percentage of type AB in the community? Do you have a guess?
Kayla McNeal
I don’t even know if I’d be close, so I’m going to say no. guess for me.
Dr. Kristina Prus
I love it. I love it. So type O is going to be about 45% of the population. So that’s great, right? Like we’re going to have a lot of O’s hanging around. Very happy about it. Unfortunately, only about 15% are AB negative, which is going to be that negative sign after your blood type. So that does kind of reduce our pool a little bit, but thankfully we’re still able to get good amounts of type O, type A. AB, however, is only about 4% of the population. So you can imagine we’re looking at a donor pool, which is already so small because only less than 5% of eligible donors actually come and donate. And then we’re hoping that of those, we have that little 4% to donate those AB platelets that support our children’s hospital here. And the other fun fact, because I got really into the weeds with these numbers, I got so excited. So when we look at this, 4% of our platelet donors are going to be AB. And then looking at the platelets that we actually transfuse at Children’s, about 40% of our platelet transfusions in a year are actually type AB. So there are 4% of donors in the Cincinnati area that are supporting 40% of those platelet transfusions that all go to kids with cancer, with bleeding disorders, with traumas, with organ transplants. So it’s pretty amazing what our donors are able to do for us.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah, that’s really amazing. And parents may wonder whether that donated blood that comes in from Hoxworth really makes a difference, whether they’re donating or they’re just like, oh, this is coming in from over here. Can you explain the impact of 1 blood donation?
Emily Kimball
Well, I always say that for a donor, donating their blood generally takes less than an hour, but for the recipient of that blood, it’s priceless because it could be life-saving or just impact their health. And a shout out to our Sickle Cell Center, they do sponsor three of our blood drives every year. So I am I’m grateful for that because it gives us a chance to educate the public more. When I promote those blood drives, we educate on sickle cell and how crucial blood donors are to our sickle cell patients. But yeah, I mean, any, as Dr. Proust said earlier, you know, if you can just do whole blood and you can’t do platelets or you can’t do the double reds, you can just because there’s some criteria that goes into that. When you go to donate, they do some tests before you actually, before they actually draw your blood. And depending on those test results is like whether you can give platelets or you can give double reds or you can just give whole blood. I’m a O positive, so I always sign up for a double red, but sometimes those test results mean that I can only give whole blood, which is great. One unit of blood is better than none, is what I say. So, but I know how important it is to just go ahead and donate. And yeah.
Dr. Kristina Prus
And even if you try, if you try to donate and can’t quite make it through, that’s still amazing because you’ve tried to give that time to give that effort to help save someone’s life. So, I encourage everyone to try at least once.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah, and kind of sticking, no pun intended, but sticking in that same vein, I know before we started recording, we talked about how even we are sometimes a little bit nervous to give blood. So what would you say to parents who are kind of sitting in that same just nervy type of feeling of being unsure about whether or not to donate blood themselves or about saying yes to a transfusion for their child?
Dr. Kristina Prus
So I think for the parents who are thinking about donating or even for the kids, because you can be 16 years old and start to be a blood donor, so highly recommend trying as well. But what I would say is, just give it a try. It doesn’t bother us at all if you show up and your test results don’t let you qualify. That’s okay. It’s okay if you come in and you do the donor questionnaire and there’s a question on there that disqualifies you. That’s okay. We are still so grateful that you even showed up. Or you could be like me, where you sit in the chair and you have 25 fans on you because I don’t do needles and you’re white as a sheet and everyone’s trying to tell you to stop. And I’m like, no, I’m going to get through this. But no, it’s totally fine to stop too, just to put that out there. I’m just really competitive with myself. So I just, I had to do it. But I think even if you try, even if you only get through two minutes and you’re like, I’m done, that’s okay, because we still absolutely appreciate the effort and the time. And then there’s also a lot that you can do to help Hoxworth even without donating blood. I know Emily has a lot of information on that.
Emily Kimball
Yes, you can organize a blood drive. Patients and families can share with their friends and family how blood donation helped them. You can donate financially to Hoxworth and you can share information about the blood drives and, with your friends and family. There’s, yeah.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Or be like Emily and organize a blood drive yourself.
Emily Kimball
Yeah, you can organize, yeah, in your own backyard. They can bring a bus basically anywhere. And there are some families who do that. They’ll have a blood drive in their neighborhood and the Hoxworth bus pulls up into their driveway or in front of their house and all their neighbors and friends and family come. So there’s lots of ways to do that. And if you’re interested in doing that, just go to Hoxworth.org and reach out that way. There’s information about that on their website.
Dr. Kristina Prus
And I also recommend, just ask questions for really both pieces of your question. if you’re wanting to come donate, ask someone who’s donated before, ask them questions about what it’s like. When you call to schedule your donation, ask the person on the line, like, hey, what is exactly the process? Or you can even talk to your medical team. You know, we all understand, at least on a basic level, what it’s like to be a donor, even if we’ve never done it ourselves. And so your medical team will know a lot about that. And the same with It goes with receiving blood. Usually, I’d say almost every single transfusion is really one that’s truly, truly needed. And so your medical team would not be recommending a blood product unless they really thought this is going to help your child or yourself if you’re a patient here. And I recommend that if you’re nervous about it, please talk to us. Your medical team has a ton of really good information. Anyone on there should be able to answer your questions. I’m also always available as well. So if you ever had a question, have your medical team reach out to me I will be more than happy to come and talk your ear off about whatever it is, because I love talking about blood if you haven’t figured it out. And I would be more than happy to come to your room if you’re an inpatient. I’ll come to clinic. Maybe not if you’re outside of Cincinnati Children’s. It might be a little bit far from me. But when you’re at your Cincinnati Children’s Clinic visit, I’m more than happy to help talk through whatever questions you may have. And I know there’s a ton of misconceptions out there. There’s a lot of news stories out there that probably suggest things that are not true. I know I’ve read some myself that really resonated with me because they are spending a lot of misinformation about what a blood product is, what it isn’t, what is in it, what is not in it. And so we are always available to help answer those questions and hopefully help you feel more comfortable or at least help you understand better what exactly is behind a blood transfusion. So yeah, I highly recommend just asking lots and lots of questions because that’s what we’re here for.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I know our listeners will as well. I know that you both have touched on so many important aspects of blood donations and blood banks, but if there’s one message that you want families to take away about blood donation, what would that message be?
Emily Kimball
To just sign up to donate blood and share information about the importance of blood donations and how it really does. Donating with Hoxworth or at a blood drive that we have at Cincinnati Children’s really does save lives close to home and definitely affects the patients here at Cincinnati Children’s since Hoxworth is our only source for blood products for our patients. Yeah, and again, it doesn’t take much time for the donor, but it makes a world of difference to the person receiving that blood.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And all I’ll add is that to me and to everyone at Hoxworth Blood Center, when you’re a blood donor, like you are truly a hero. You are a hero to someone’s life because they would otherwise probably not be able to survive even without that life-saving blood transfusion. So I highly encourage you, go try. And if you can’t try or if you don’t want to, or if you’re not able to, encourage someone else or help in some way. Because again, it’s one of the most selfless things you can do to help someone else. And even if you do it only one time because it wasn’t for you, still helped save up to three lives from that one time that you donated. So yeah, keep that in mind.
Kayla McNeal
Yeah. Well, you both have answered all of the questions that we prepared for you. So Is there anything we didn’t talk about that you would like to touch on or just, I guess, one final last push to donate blood?
Emily Kimball
Well, I’ll promote our next blood drive, which is February 20th in the Sabin Auditorium. It’s a Friday and it goes from 10 A.m. to 4 P.m. And sign up, you can sign up online or you can call Hoxworth. And I’m sorry, I don’t have that number in front of me. But they can look it up. You just Google it and sign up for one of the slots that we have available for the next blood drive on February 20th.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Yeah, thank you for that. And all I’ll add is. Blood is incredibly complex. And I think sometimes we talk about it like it grows on trees or it’s just, this really simple product that has, nothing really behind it. Oh, just give some blood. But this is something that I studied for over a year and, both in my fellowship training and then, I did another fellowship because I like to train too much apparently. But really at the end of the day, it’s an incredibly complex really wonderful product, but also one that can certainly have its own side effects as well. So I think it’s something that I love to talk about and all of our team back at Cincinnati Children’s in the laboratory loves to talk about. So again, anytime you have any questions, feel free to reach out because that’s what we’re here for. I know it can be a scary product. I know it can be something that you just forget about. Sometimes our oncology patients just get so used to it that they don’t even notice that there’s blood being transfused. And so I think it’s something that we all want to think about at all times, but at the same time, like, you know, we always love to talk about it and it’s something that’s really fascinating.
Emily Kimball
I did want to mention one more thing. Lots of patients at Cincinnati Children’s are, you know, as we’ve talked about, greatly affected and benefit from the blood donations. But if you go to the Hoxworth.org website, they have lots of patient stories about and recipients. And there’s also stories from donors about like why they donate and why they donate regularly. And then there’s also lots of patient stories and several of those patients are patients at Cincinnati Children’s. And so I encourage you to They’re very inspiring stories and it definitely is heartwarming to read about their stories and read about how grateful they are for the blood that they received from blood donors.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a really great point. Highly recommend to go to go read it.
Kayla McNeal
Wonderful. Well, Dr. Proust and Emily, thank you both again for joining us today. This was a really good and important conversation, and I hope that it helps families better understand just how powerful blood donation can be. So truly, thank you both for being here today.
Dr. Kristina Prus
Thank you so much.
Emily Kimball
It was our pleasure.
Kayla McNeal
Wonderful. You’ve been listening to the Young and Healthy podcast. We’ll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Young and Healthy Podcast. If you’re enjoying the show, make sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you love to listen. You can stay connected and get the latest updates by following us on Instagram at Young and Healthy Pod. If you find the podcast helpful, intended for informational and educational purposes only. This episode was produced by Symfhani Fair-Harris, and our theme music was created by Stephen Greico.
