BBTS Apheresis & Blood Collection
Therapeutic Apheresis Special Interest Group
Thursday 17 May 2012, 10am - 4pm
Austin Court, Birmingham City Centre
A one day meeting in Birmingham running two parallel sessions
1. Therapeutics
2. Donors
Theme
“Evidence-Based Therapeutic Apheresis: making sure that we are providing value for money”
Aimed at
Therapeutic Apheresis is aimed at nursing staff or medical staff involved in carrying out therapeutic apheresis on patients (e.g. plasma exchange, red cell exchange orphotopheresis).
Summary
With the Credit Crunch and Eurozone Crisis showing no signs of improving anytime soon, how can we safeguard the future of therapeutic apheresis services in the UK without wasting money? And how do we stay sane and cheerful while doing this?
Key learning objectives
Many centres both within and outside of the UK Transfusion Services offer therapeutic apheresis procedures such as plasma exchange, red cell exchange and extracorporeal photopheresis. These procedures can be expensive and invasive, yet there have been relatively few relevant RCTs and much of the published evidence comes from small case series.
- How do we ensure that we are following “best practice”?
- How do we avoid offering an expensive and potentially harmful placebo?
- What do we do about patients with rare conditions not listed in the ASFA guidelines?
- How do we ensure consistent and equitable access to expensive procedures such as photopheresis across the UK?
Provisional programme (speakers to be confirmed)
- “Evidence-based plasma exchange: the ASFA guidelines, and what on earth to do about referrals for patients with diagnoses too rare to be listed?”
- “Shaken, not stirred! Plasma exchange on dialysis equipment by renal physicians – how does it compare with centrifugation in clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness?”
- “How I manage the neurologists!”
- “Extracorporeal photopheresis – it’s expensive, so how do we make sure that it’s fair?”
- “Apheresis red cell exchange – who, how and how often?”
Abstracts for posters and vignettes
Have you a topic you would like to present as a poster or a vignette? If so we would like to hear from you. Send a 250 work summary to Dr Kenny Douglas at kenneth.douglas@nhs.net by 30 March 2012.