52nd Annual Meeting
New York City, New York
On June 5th & 6th, the Blood Banks Association of New York State held its 52nd Annual Meeting in New York City. The meeting was co-sponsored by the New York Blood Center and was held at the blood center's facility at 310 East 67th Street. In addition, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center generously provided meeting rooms for the technical and management sessions. The programs provided a variety of clinical, technical and management topics.
On June 4th, prior to the Annual Meeting, the American Association of Blood Banks once again offered a full-day new assessor training program. On June 5th, the morning scientific session, moderated by Dr. Robert Reiss, was an excellent update on transfusion practice in oncology. Dr. David Wuest of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center spoke on the special transfusion concerns for the oncology patient, with a primary focus on transfusion-transmitted CMV infection and transfusion-associated graft-vs-host disease. A review of the use of apheresis platelets compared to platelet concentrates in oncology was discussed by Dr. Karen King of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. To cap off the session, Dr. Thomas Price of Puget Sound Blood Center in Seattle presented an excellent review of granulocyte transfusions from G-CSF stimulated granulocyte donors to combat life-threatening infections in the marrow transplant setting.
Concurrently, a damp workshop on antibody identification was presented by Christine Lomas-Francis, Dalisay Charles-Pierre and Michelle Yacob of the Immunohematology Laboratory of the New York Blood Center and Jennifer Dikeman of Winthrop University Hospital. The nineteen registrants had been sent two unknown samples for antibody identification in advance, then shared their findings during the workshop. The challenging samples included one with multiple alloantibodies and the second with an antibody to a high incidence antigen with an additional underlying antibody.
Also on Thursday morning, Tanya Hamilton chaired an excellent management session entitled "Process Improvement Tools for the 21st Century". The first speaker in this session was Susan South of Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics who spoke on the application of Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing principles to transfusion services and donor centers. She discussed effective tools to review processes and identify best practices in operations. The next speaker was Mary Lieb from Memorial Medical Center. Her topic, titled" Benchmarking The Elusive Search for Good Information", gave the audience an overview of benchmarking, as well as an update on the AABB benchmarking tool.
Following a buffet lunch, courtesy of Baxter Healthcare Corporation, the BBANYS annual business meeting was held. Donna Strauss assumed her new duties as President of the association.
The afternoon scientific session, moderated by Dr. Joseph Chiofolo, dealt with coagulation and included an equally impressive group of speakers. Dr. Harry Staszewski of Winthrop-University Hospital presented an update on new anticoagulant drugs and the issues associated with their use. The next speaker, Dr. Richard Lipton of Long Island Jewish Medical Center, reviewed the current management of hemophilia. The clinical session concluded with a comprehensive overview of coagulation disorders in a session titled "Thrombophilia for the Blood Bank Community", given by Dr. Henny Billett of Einstein Weiler Hospital.
The focus of the afternoon technical session was serological problem solving through case study presentations. The faculty included Vivien Powell and Anna Burgos of the Immunohematology Laboratory of the New York Blood Center, consultant Sydney McDonald and Susan Salerno of the American Rd Cross. Each faculty member presented a case study to the thirty-five registrants, which was intended to represent an unusual antibody identification situation, with emphasis on techniques and approaches to its resolution. The cases presented covered a variety of serological situations that can be difficult to resolve, such as delayed hemolytic transfusion reactions and warm auto-antibodies.
Also on Thursday afternoon, Barbara Reilly moderated a workshop entitled "Solving Today's Administrative Challenges". The speakers shared information on a potpourri of management topics related to personnel, public relations and regulatory issues. Shaun Smith of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center discussed effective recruitment strategies in a competitive marketplace. The second speaker, Linda Levi of the New York Blood Center presented an overview of media relations. Dr. Elaine Keohane from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey shared the New Jersey perspective of the laboratory personnel shortage and the work of the the task force that was created to address the problem. Concluding the session, Bruce Cohn of Westchester Medical Center discussed regulatory challenges in healthcare related to patient safety. He reviewed transfusion-related sentinel events and the root cause of such events.
Thursday's sessions concluded with a wine and cheese reception, providing attendees with light refreshments and an opportunity to network with colleagues.
On June 6th, the scientific/technical seminar included a comprehensive overview of blood product safety and availability. Dr. Jay Valinsky of the New York Blood Center presented an overview of emerging infections. His presentation gave the audience an excellent background of information and laid the foundation for subsequent speakers. Kenra Ford of Oklahoma Blood Institute spoke about that institution's experience to date with bacterial detection. Dr. Bernard Horowitz of the Horowitz Consulting, LLC then provided a review of pathogen reduction methods. Dr. Louis Katz of Mississippi Valley Regional Medical Center concluded the session with an overview of the status of the blood supply.
The meeting was well attended, with over 150 registrants in attendance over the course of the two-day program. By all accounts, the 52nd Annual Meeting was a successful program. BBANYS expresses its sincere appreciation to the following companies for their generous contributions to help defray meeting expenses: Abbott Diagnostics, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Beckman Coulter, Gambro, Inc., Haemonetics Corporation, Immucor, Inc., Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, PALL Medical, Roche Diagnostics, Terumo Medical, Wyeth and Wyndgate Technologies. We look forward to a full vendor exhibit area next year when the Annual Meeting will be held June 9-11, 2004 at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. We thank three vendors for early support of the 2004 meeting: Metro Monitoring Company, Rees Scientific and Validation Partners.