MCW Pathology & Laboratory Medicine - Transfusion Services

The division of Transfusion Medicine provides an array of laboratory and clinical services, including the Blood Bank and Apheresis Service. The transfusion service supports the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region, and provides approximately 40,000 units of donor products annually, and performs approximately 400 apheresis procedures per year.

Blood Bank services include blood typing, fetal-maternal hemorrhage evaluation, evaluation of autoantibodies, cross-matching, and identification of atypical alloantibodies. The Apheresis Service provides clinical services including red cell exchange transfusions, photopheresis, leukoreductions, autologous and donor stem cell collections, and therapeutic apheresis. Donor lymphocyte collections are also provided.

The Blood Bank faculty is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide consultative services for Froedtert Hospital patients. The transfusion medicine division is under the direction of Jerome Gottschall, MD

The Blood Bank provides:

• High quality transfusion medicine care to the patients at Froedtert Hospital and several associated outpatient facilities
• Education to medical students, SBB students, residents, fellows, and medical technologists
• Leadership in hospital blood management
• Support for a variety of clinical and basic science research studies

In collaboration with the Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin, the Froedtert Apheresis Service supports both in-patients and out-patients across the entire age spectrum 24 hours a day. Under the direction of the Transfusion Service faculty, Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin apheresis nurses care for a variety of patient populations including hematology, oncology, neurology, transplantation, rheumatology, and others.

The Apheresis/Transfusion Service provides:

• Comprehensive clinical service to patients
• Training opportunities to future physicians
• Support for basic and clinical research

The Blood Bank faculty also provides interactive, full-time, blood management consultative services for all Froedtert Hospital physicians. Through collaboration with hospital services such as Surgery, Anesthesia, and OB-GYN, the division of Transfusion Medicine provides education and best-practice guidance on all blood products and product derivatives.

Lastly, Blood Bank faculty is actively involved in research, both independent and collaborative. The Transfusion Medicine division is at the forefront of modern blood banking practice, and is a key participant in various multi-institutional research programs involving transfusion practices and transfusion recipient outcomes: Current national collaborations include REDS-III, RING, RECESS, and PROPPR.