Why pH SAFE (Sterile Automated Fluoroscopic Evaluation)?

  • Better monitoring of the world’s blood supply means better health for every person;
  • Healthy platelets will result in effective, life-saving transfusions;
  • Platelet therapy is used to reduce the risk of bleeding in high-risk patients such as those receiving chemotherapy, patients who have suffered severe trauma from incidences like car accidents and soldiers wounded in battle.
  • Effective transfusions will reduce the number of days a patient spends in a hospital and reduce the number of additional transfusions required.

How does pH Monitoring Ensure Healthy Outcomes?

  • Platelet quality as measured by pH can be compromised by:
    • Suboptimal conditions during transport and storage.
    • Bacterial contamination in the platelet unit- this can be an excellent double check for contaminants that missed in early sampling.
    • Processing variables such as volume, platelet count, and available glucose.
    • Donor-specific blood suitability for storage.
    • The new pathogen reduction and inactivation processes.
  • 100% operational monitoring of pH is possible today for platelets
  • pH is an accepted quality parameter for platelets in the transfusion practice

Knowing the condition of the blood offered before medical procedures remove contamination risks such as infection during the transfusion process, and guarantees only effective blood components are available for transfusion.

What is the BCSI pH SAFE System?

  • Non-invasive – no sample is required
    • Zero risks of product contamination during pH reading
    • Zero risks of blood exposure to technical staff
  • Fast – a single pH test is performed in under 1 second
    • An entire inventory of 100 platelet units can be read in under 30 minutes.
  • Accurate – each pH measurement is accurate to 0.1 pH units
    • Accuracy is superior to pH paper and similar to pH electrodes and blood gas analyzers
    • Other methods require sampling protocols susceptible to CO2 off-gassing errors
  • Vein to Vein platelet control – The pH can be measured multiple times all along the supply chain from component separation to transfusion.
  • Cost effective – BCSI pH SAFE SENSOR adds a small price to the storage bag, giving the pH SAFE READER the accuracy of a blood gas analyzer at a much lower cost.
  • No waiting for pH results –
    • The pH SAFE SENSOR is built into the platelet storage bag and always ready to measure
    • The system is pre-calibrated with no waiting for an instrument to calibrate
    • A simple yes/no pH check by hospitals just before transfusion.