MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Monongalia County will become the third county in the state to offer a whole blood program through emergency medical services.
Monongalia EMS will begin the program on May 1.
Dr. Michael Shukis, Mon EMS medical director, said there has been a nationwide effort to return whole blood programs. The chances of surviving a traumatic incident increase dramatically when there is access to whole blood.
“I believe the Korean War was the first time we gave whole blood, and there has been quite a push to bring it back to a pre-hospital setting,” Shukis said. “There are fewer than 100 counties in the United States that can give whole blood.”
Director of Clinical Services Dr. Robby May said the shift supervisor’s vehicle will carry one unit of blood.
May said from 2020 to 2023, there were 1.2 million trauma patients who were eligible for prehospital blood transfusion, but less than one percent received the intervention because of a lack of availability. May said the peak time of death for a hemorrhaging patient is 30 minutes and research shows that it takes on average 74 to 88 minutes from the 911 call for a patient to get into an operating room, creating the need for prehospital blood transfusions.
“If they’re thinking the patient or know the patient qualifies for blood based on state protocol, or the 911 dispatcher believes this is a call that may need blood, our supervisor will be dispatched with that,” May said.
Shukis said one unit may not sound like a lot but that is enough to ease certain traumatic conditions and buy the patient more time to get to the hospital.
“That blood has everything you need, from being able to carry oxygen, build clots and give you more volume if your blood pressure is low, as opposed to some of the components of blood,” Shukis said.
Mon EMS will be supplied by the WVU Medicine Blood Bank and stock will be rotated back to the hospital to prevent it from spoiling in the field. The blood has a shelf-life of about one month, according to Dr. May.
“Every week we’ll exchange that—if we use it each week, we’ll exchange it that way,” May said. “If a week has come and we have not used it, we will exchange it out,” Dr. May said.
May said having a supply of blood in the field gives the most critically injured patients the best chance of survival. The new service provides another option for patients suffering from extremely critical and traumatic injuries.
“Which is why we’re bringing this care to them at the actual scene even though we have a fantastic trauma center in our backyard, we can start that care that is truly going to save the patient,” he said.