UC San Diego Healthcare Transfusion Services

UC San Diego Transfusion Medicine

The primary mission of UC San Diego Transfusion Services is to provide excellent hemotherapy components and services to UC San Diego patients, and to do so in a resource efficient manner.

UC San Diego Transfusion Services are integrated and harmonized at UC San Diego Health's hospitals at Hillcrest and La Jolla and support key UC San Diego Health's clinical and teaching programs, including acute care medical and surgical patients, prenatal care, labor and delivery, neonatology, trauma, burn, solid organ transplant, autologous and allogeneic blood and marrow transplant, and an expanding cardiovascular surgery program.

The Transfusion Service also serves as the core educational resource for Transfusion Medicine at UC San Diego. Trainees include staff physicians, residents, medical students, nurses, hospital staff, and others. UC San Diego Pathology Residents provide medical direction of the Transfusion Services under the supervision of the Transfusion Medicine Attending Staff and also participate as trainees in the operations of the UC San Diego Hemapheresis Service, and the UC San Diego Cell Therapy Processing Facility. Residents learn Blood Center operations at the San Diego Blood Bank during their rotation at the VA Medical Center. UC San Diego Hematology/Oncology Residents and also Pathology and Heme/Onc Residents from other institutions, including Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, and Naval Hospital also receive Transfusion Medicine training through the UC San Diego Transfusion Service.

UC San Diego Transfusion Services are led by a dedicated team of excellent physicians and technical professionals, most of whom have advanced and/or specialty training and certification in Clinical or Laboratory fields of Transfusion Medicine. These individuals participate actively in national and regional transfusion medicine professional societies, accrediting agencies, and government agencies and frequently hold leadership positions in these organizations. This excellent and diversified professional staff provides daily consultation to UC San Diego staff physicians and staff regarding optimal hemotherapy and blood management for medical and surgical patients, including emergency transfusion, trauma, liver transplantation, neonatal transfusion, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, ABO incompatible marrow transplant, and the evaluation, treatment, and prophylaxis or prevention of hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn, transfusion reactions, platelet refractoriness, and a host of other complex conditions.

The Transfusion Medicine Service provides essential support for clinical and laboratory investigation at UC San Diego. Staff participates in wide variety of clinical and laboratory investigations in hemotherapy that are supported by the NIH, national professional groups (e.g., AABB, CAP, TJC), and commercial sponsors and also participates in the CDC’s national hemovigilance program for blood recipients.

As a critical resource of UC San Diego’s multicenter healthcare system, the UC San Diego Transfusion Services infrastructure includes advanced transfusion service automation, data processing, and information technology that is linked to the electronic medical record, to support its diverse functions. Concurrent with the UC San Diego Health Laboratory Services’ ambitions plans for lab-wide renovation and expansion in the near future, the Transfusion Services are in the final planning stages for a carefully designed, major upgrade of all its facilities in both Hillcrest and La Jolla. When complete, this renovation will serve the UC San Diego Health’s needs for the foreseeable future and will provide the infrastructure for the UC San Diego Transfusion Service to continue to serve in a leadership role for the community.