Blood Shortage on Critical List; Some Surgeries Delayed

Some hospitals in the Los Angeles area showed a slight increase in blood supplies Thursday, but many still have less than a day’s supply of types O and B blood on hand, hospital spokesmen said.

Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, which still has only half a day’s supply of the critical blood types, has had to juggle several surgeries, delaying some cancer, brain and heart surgery patients, blood services director Dr. Carol Bell said.

“The shortage leaves everyone unprotected,” Bell said. “If a type O emergency case came in, we’d be too short to take it. We’re just fortunate that hasn’t happened.”

The shortage is caused partly by bad weather conditions, which have caused cancellation of some blood drives, and because the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays both fell on Tuesdays, usually one of the best collection days of the week, American Red Cross officials said.

One-Day Supply County-USC Medical Center has a one-day supply of type O blood, up from half a day’s stock on Wednesday, blood services director Dr. Ira Shulman said.

“Ordinarily we have three to five days’ supply on hand. So if there is a big emergency we have enough to cover it,” Shulman said. “But if the Red Cross couldn’t deliver 10 pints at the drop of a hat, if someone came in here losing a lot of blood, he could bleed to death.”

Shulman said that the hospital draws blood from its employees and patients’ families and friends but that the Red Cross supplies 75% of the hospital’s blood reserves.

“Even if we doubled our in-house donations, we’d still be way short,” he said.

The Red Cross, blood supplier for 200 hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the situation is still critical, as is has received only enough donations to cover daily requests and is still more than 5,000 units short of replenishing stocks to a safe reserve level.

“We received 441 more units than we expected on Wednesday, but there’s no way we can replenish our supplies in a day,” Red Cross spokeswoman Gerry Sohle said. “We need people who have already made a commitment to give blood to do it, and we really need new donors.”

The Red Cross sent out 200,000 mailers before the traditionally slow holidays, warning its regular donors of a potential blood shortage, she added. The organization has all of its 22 mobile collecting units out and has been telephoning donors to alert them of the crisis and tell them where they can donate blood.

Although other cities around the country are also experiencing shortages, Sohle said the situation is particularly bad in Los Angeles because there is such a great demand for type O blood in the area.

“We have so many people who have type O blood--it is especially common among Latino peoples--yet we have so few donors,” Sohle said.

Typically, about 45% of the blood collected in the United States is type O, 40% is type A, which tends to come from people of European stock; 4% is AB: and about 11% is type B, which tends to come from blacks and Asians.

Type O blood is considered the universal or neutral blood type because it can be given to people with other blood types without causing serious complications. Type O patients, however, cannot receive type A, B, or AB blood.

Several donors who gave blood at the Red Cross donor facility at 1130 S. Vermont Ave. Thursday said they did so after reading newspapers and hearing radio and TV announcements of the blood shortage.