PLATELETPHERESIS DURING PLASMA COLLECTION

New systems for collection of platelet concentrate (PC) and platelet p oor plasma (PPP) are presently available. The aim of our work was to t est the possibility of preparing PC routinely from normal plasma donor s in a minimum amount of time and, at the same time, providing a secon d product that can be used as source-plasma or fresh-frozen plasma. Ov er a 3 year period (from 1990 to 1992) we performed 3503 procedures us ing 2 Haemonetics PCS machines (1236 procedures) and 3 Autopheresis-C (2267 procedures). With the PC produced we were able to satisfy all th e requests coming from the hospitals of our region. The platelet yield was 1.95x10(11) with PCS and 3.2x10(11) with Auto-C in a PC volume of 150 and 200 ml respectively; collection times were quite similar (56 and 63 min). The results show that plasma-plateletpheresis is an effic ient and competitive system. Regarding platelet yield, the best result s were obtained with the Auto-C.