Even though the majority of the activities of Community Blood Centers of South Florida (CBCSF) are directed towards the recruitment, collection, processing and distribution of blood and blood related products, there is a significant number of direct patient care services called “Clinical Services” that are offered by CBCSF. Many of these services are not available in all hospitals because they are used only rarely by any one facility. By centralizing the laboratory or the service at the Blood Center it allows all patients in South Florida, whether they are at a large tertiary care facility or a small community hospital to access the most sophisticated blood related services that can be found anywhere in the United States. Because of the combined workload from the large number of hospitals that use its services the blood center can maintain a very high level of expertise and sophisticated reagents.

The following is a brief overview of the Clinical Services offered by Community Blood Centers of South Florida If you would like additional information on any one of these services, please email us by clicking here.

Red Cell Reference Laboratory: nationally recognized, and AABB accredited, the CBCSF red blood cell reference laboratory is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for red cell compatibility workups. This laboratory also identifies rare and complex antibody problems and provides rare blood to patients with extremely rare blood types. In addition, the red cell reference laboratory has a special program to provide blood to sickle cell patients who have special transfusion needs. Finally, this laboratory identifies compatible blood for transfusion at several smaller local hospitals and over 100 dialysis centers, home infusion programs and surgical clinics.

Transplant/HLA Laboratory: this laboratory deals with issues relating to cellular immunity and with the compatibility of platelets. HLA, which stands for "Human Leukocyte Antigens" are substances found on our white blood cells that reflect the composition of our immune system. The HLA Laboatory uses tests to:

• find compatible platelets for patients who have developed antibodies to most platelets, so that transfused platelets will survive and patients do not bleed.
• determine paternity (we can distinguish between a true and presumed father).
• determine whether a person can serve as a compatible bone marrow donor.
• determine if a patient has an HLA typing that is associated with specific diseases (this helps doctors make a diagnosis on difficult cases).

Flow Cytometry Laboratory: this laboratory identifies cell surface markers to better diagnose cancers. Several thousand leukemia, lymphomas and minimum residual disease cases are diagnosed each year by the CBCSF Flow Cytometry Laboratory. A Hematopathology consult service is also available as well as molecular testing for lymphomas and leukemias. In addition, this lab can determine if there are small numbers of residual tumor cells in the body after treatment is completed. Finally, the lab provides the blood center with accurate and state-of-the-art quality control for its specialized platelet products.

Apheresis Services: the CBCSF apheresis department provides in-hospital apheresis procedures to treat selected diseases. Using CBCSF staff, equipment, and procedures, diseased plasma or cells are removed and normal blood components are provided to the patient. In this manner, patients with diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, TTP, Guillain-Barre, Waldenstrom's Macroglobulimemia and severe leukemic blast crises are treated.

Physician Consultation Services: CBCSF has three full-time physicians with more than 50 years of combined blood banking related experience. CBCSF provides medical and technical consultations to area physicians who require assistance in dealing with complex and difficult transfusion medicine related cases.

Educational Services: CBCSF is extremely active in providing the community with educational services. Staff at CBCSF are on the faculty at all the local medical schools and major universities. They speak regularly to nursing, laboratory and other medical support classes. In addition, CBCSF has an active speakers bureau for educating the public about blood and related issues.

Research Activities: CBCSF is very active in research activities designed to improve the safety and the adequacy of our blood supply. Current projects involve blood donor motivation, effectiveness of virally inactivated plasma products, and evaluating donor loss resulting from proposed new federal regulations.