Medicine: Red Blood Tests

Since the Red Cross began to bank blood, thousands of gallons of red blood corpuscles have been thrown down the drain—only the blood plasma is used. Dr. Warren Cooksey, technical supervisor of Detroit’s blood bank, thought there ought to be something these discarded red cells, which constitute 46% of the whole blood, would be good for. Last winter he began supplying Detroit hospitals with batches of specially processed red corpuscles for experimental transfusions (TIME, Feb. 15). Last week Philadelphia Naval Hospital doctors, who had the same idea, reported that red-cell transfusions had proved spectacularly successful in treating anemia.

The Navy doctors administered 72 red-cell transfusions to 48 anemic patients. All but four showed definite improvement. Only two had bad reactions (they became feverish). One patient, apparently dying of pernicious anemia, was given five red-cell transfusions; his red-cell blood count improved from 650,000 to 3,130,000, his hemoglobin from 2 to 11 gm. per 100 c.c., in a month he was able to go home.

Reporting these results in the American Medical Association Journal, the Navy doctors noted that fully half of all hospital patients requiring transfusions need red cells only.