New trends in the preparation and storage of platelets

The traditional way of preparing platelets for transfusion from whole blood is to make platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in a first step and then to pellet the platelets by a second centrifugation step and suspend them in a reduced volume of plasma. An alternative method, used particularly in Europe,l-13 is to sediment all blood cells in a first phase and to recover the supernatant plasma and the buffy coat (BC) layer in separate containers. The platelets are recovered from the BC preparation in a second step in which the red cells (RBCs) and white cells (WBCs) are sedimented and the supernatant is hawested. This latter procedure has the advantages that considerably more plasma can be obtained than at an initial gentle centrifugation, that the final platelet concentrate (PC)