Residents looking to donate blood can do so Tuesday at a blood drive in Gaithersburg hosted by the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS) in collaboration with Inova Blood Donor Services.
The drive aims to support the MCFRS Whole Blood Transfusion Program, which provides trained paramedics with the capability to administer whole blood transfusions before a patient is transported to a hospital, according to MCFRS officials.
The event will run from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the county’s public safety headquarters at 100 Edison Park Drive in Gaithersburg. Appointments are required and can be made at this link.
According to officials, the program was “soft-launched” in August and on the first day of implementation, first responders administered whole blood to a patient. MCFRS officially rolled out its innovative program in December.
The initiative is “one of the greatest milestones that we’ve achieved in my entire 24 years” with the county department, MCFRS Medical Director Dr. Roger Stone said at a December press conference about the program’s rollout.
“For some time, trauma surgeons have long recognized that there’s a value to pre-hospital transfusion of blood as a vital life-sustaining bridge when patients are on the way to a facility where they can get rapid surgical intervention to stop the bleeding,” Stone said.
Whole blood is the “preferred product for resuscitation of severe traumatic hemorrhage,” according to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. “It contains all the elements of blood that are necessary for oxygen delivery” and hemostasis, or the body’s process of stopping bleeding and repairing an injury.
MCFRS spokesperson Pete Piringer said Tuesday’s blood drive run by Inova is being held in conjunction with the transfusion program.
While Piringer said he is not aware of a whole blood shortage for the program, he noted, “now that we are involved in the whole blood transfusion program, we’re doing whatever we can to help maintain adequate blood supply that we will be able to tap into and use directly.”
The MCFRS program stemmed from interest in trauma resuscitation due to an increase in the number of “penetrating injuries, shootings and stabbings” that are occurring in the county, MCFRS Assistant Chief Ben Kaufman said at the December press conference.
“What we didn’t realize was the high volume of medical patients that we were going to be seeing and able to resuscitate with whole blood,” Kaufman said, noting that patients with a medical problem such as a gastrointestinal bleed or an obstetrics issue also benefit from the transfusions.
According to Stone, only about 1% of emergency medical services nationwide have the capability to administer whole blood transfusions on scene. MCFRS is the third in the state to have its paramedics implement such a program, after Maryland State Police and Howard County. In April, Washington, D.C., also began implementing a whole blood transfusion program for paramedics.
From August to mid-February, MCFRS paramedics have conducted whole blood transfusions on 33 patients in the field, according to MCFRS officials. Of those 33 individuals, 19 survived.
How does the program work?
MCFRS partners with Suburban Hospital in Bethesda and Fairfax-based Inova Blood Donor Services to get the O-positive blood they administer to patients in the field.
According to officials, the blood is acquired from Inova blood drives and donor centers. The blood is then supplied to Suburban Hospital’s blood bank, which processes and holds the blood for MCFRS paramedics to use in the field.
Piringer said residents and donors can expect several more opportunities this year to donate blood that will be used in the program.
