Hello, I'm Dr. Mike Samuels, third-year emergency medicine resident at the Medical College of Georgia Emergency Medicine Residency.

This is the first of two podcasts here on EM Basic talking about the basics of blood products and transfusions.

Now there is a lot of information out there regarding the who, when, or why to transfuse blood products, as well as

the risks of transfusion. With the next two podcasts, we will try to cover the basics of blood

transfusion while touching on some areas of controversy. Joining me today is Dr. Dan McCollum,

assistant program director for the Emergency Medicine Residency at the Medical

College of Georgia. Good morning, Dan. Good morning, Mike. Glad to be talking with you today.

Before we dive in, we'd like to say that we have no conflicts of interest and the views represented

in this podcast are ours alone and do not represent those of the Medical College of Georgia

or any institution

affiliated with a residency.

So you're working a busy shift in the emergency department when a nurse comes up to you and says,

I have a 65-year-old female we've been giving blood to, and she's now complaining of shortness

of breath.

She's diaphoretic and starting to drop her sats.

Right after you get this information, another nurse tells you, I've got a patient we've

been giving a transfusion to and they've started getting a fever. Can you order them some

acetaminophen? And because it's turned into one of those kind of shifts, a third nurse

comes up to you and says, hey, this guy just

started giving a transfusion to is getting a rash. What do you want to do? Now, hopefully you don't get

three separate transfusion reactions going on in your department at once. But assuming you did,

how would you approach these three at first Dan well hopefully this isn't

...