Types of Blood Donations

If you've donated in the past, please take a moment to fill out our
LifeSouth Donor Survey.

The whole blood donation process
After completing your “mini-physical” and medical history, you will be directed to a donor chair. A trained donor specialist will clean your arm in preparation for the actual donation.

The needlestick feels like a pinch in the crook of your arm and after four to eight minutes, you will have donated approximately one pint of blood.

After a successful whole blood donation, you must wait eight weeks (56 days) to make a whole blood donation or an apheresis donation.

The blood will be separated into different components such as red cells, platelets and plasma. Splitting your blood donation into these components means that your one blood donation can help save the lives of three or more people. Patients who need transfusions only receive the component their body needs.

The apheresis donation process
Technology is available that can greatly enhance LifeSouth’s ability to collect the blood components that are most needed in our community at any given time.

This technology allows a donor to give one, or more, specific blood component through a process called apheresis.

Apheresis (pronounced ay-fer-ee-sis) is a Greek word meaning “to separate” or “to take away.” In this process, blood is collected from the donor’s arm and then separated into different components in a special machine designed for this purpose. The components that are needed are reserved and the other components are returned to the donor.

Donating blood components through apheresis is just as safe as donating whole blood. Everything used in the process, including the needle, tubing and blood bags, are sterile and used only once before being discarded.

The requirements for being an apheresis donor are the same as for a whole blood donor except a platelet donor must not have taken medications which contain aspirin or ibuprofin for 36 hours before donating.

Apheresis can be used to collect any blood component. Most often it is used to collect platelets - the component that is essential for blood clotting.

Platelets & apheresis
Platelets are frequently transfused to patients who are undergoing treatment for leukemia, bone marrow transplants, cancer and aplastic anemia.

When someone donates a pint of whole blood, the platelets that are separated from the whole blood create a fairly small volume of platelets. A patient needs between 6 to 10 of these platelet transfusions (called random platelets) in order to receive enough platelets to make a difference for a patient.

When LifeSouth collects platelets from a donor through the apheresis process, one donor can give enough platelets to help one patient. This reduces a patient’s exposure to multiple donors.

After a platelet apheresis donation, you can donate whole blood after 48 hours.

Other types of apheresis donations
LifeSouth uses the apheresis process to collect other components from donors including red cells and plasma. New technologies make it possible to safely collect a variety of blood components including:

Platelets and plasma
Red cells and plasma
Red cells, platelets and plasma
Or even two or three units of platelets

Sometimes the waiting time between subsequent donations may change depending on what component and how much of it LifeSouth collects during the apheresis procedure.