Hematology

This year's contribution to contempo in hematology has been written by Jeffrey McCullough, MD, professor and director of the Blood Bank at University of Minnesota Hospitals. In his excellent resume of recent advances and improvements in transfusion service in the United States, Dr McCullough has omitted one important topic: the provision of blood. The recruitment of donors remains difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The yield is small for effort expended. The transfusion service that produces the benefits described by Dr McCullough is maintained by the donations of approximately 3% of our citizens. Moreover, I suspect that physicians are no better than the rest. I suspect that less than 5% of us remember to ask the families of patients to donate. One important improvement in donor recruitment has taken place over the years: blood is no longer sold to our community blood banks. The generous 3% donate it gratis.