EAST HILLS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Experts called on government and medical organizations involved in blood transfusion to “reverse one of the most serious public health policy errors in the history of transfusion therapy in the United States.” Neil Blumberg, M.D. and Joanna M. Heal, M.D., specialists in transfusion medicine and hematology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, urged that universal adoption of leukocyte reduction, the removal of leukocytes (white blood cells) from all transfused blood by filtration, be mandated throughout the United States. In a commentary in the October 15, 2007 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, they refer to leukocyte reduction as “the greatest advance in preventing short-term complications and death due to blood transfusion in the past half-century.”
