Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine Environment:
The Division of Transfusion Medicine is based in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh and the laboratory is located on the Fifth Floor Main Tower, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. This laboratory occupies approximately 1200 square feet and issues more than 75,000 blood components to the University of Pittsburgh Hospitals in the Oakland Campus and Children's hospital of Pittsburgh. This site is one of 15 sites served through an integrated network of hospital transfusion services called the Centralized Transfusion Service (CTS) at the Institute for Transfusion Medicine (ITxM). The CTS, one of the largest and most innovative transfusion services in the country, is a national leader in implementing the concept of centralized transfusion facilities. CTS annually provides more than 110,000 red cells and 80,000 platelets to area hospitals; representing more than 2/3 of all the transfusion sin the Pittsburgh region. The core laboratory also houses an AABB accredited red cell reference laboratory which tests more than 4,000 antibody samples annually from a three state region. ITxM also provides the blood center training environment for the fellows at Central Blood Bank, a community based blood center that collects and distributes blood and blood products to over 40 hospitals in the Western Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia, and Eastern Ohio region. Annually, it draws blood from approximately 160,000 whole blood donors and 170,000 apheresis donors.
ITxM also provides comprehensive laboratory testing in other areas related to transfusion medicine. It also manages a premier reference Coagulation Laboratory, a patient viral testing laboratory, an active therapeutic apheresis service that includes the stem cell harvest program and a stem cell procesing laboratory. ITxM has a medical staff consisting of 7 full-time physicians, and a Ph.D. The physicians have full-time Medical School appointments at the University of Pittsburgh (3 in the Department of Pathology and 4 in the Division of Hematology/Bone Marrow Transplant, Department of Medicine).
