WHAT IS RANDOM DONOR PLATELET (RDP) ?

The quantity of Platelets that is obtained from Whole Blood is very little. This in most cases is not enough to meet the requirement of one patient. It becomes necessary to collect blood from many donors and consolidate the Platelets obtained from each donor. Therefore, Platelets obtained from Whole Blood in routine blood donations are called Random Donor Platelets (RDPs). They are also called as "Pooled Platelets".

All Blood Banks in Mumbai do not have the facility of component separation. These Blood Banks collect 'Whole Blood' during blood drives, and these are collected in ‘single’ blood bags. There is no chance of Random Donor Platelets being available with such blood banks.

Blood Banks that are attached to Hospitals primarily try and cater to the in-house requirements. Therefore the Blood Bank staff after making a careful assessment of the in-house requirement of Random Donor Platelets, may decide on not making components from all the units collected during a blood drive.

Since Platelets have a life of only 5 days, making Random Donor Platelets available calls for intensive management, which includes scheduling of large number of smaller drives, and better networking between Blood Banks.