The practice of blood transfusion is a science which has been showing fast growth, continuous changes and a great perspective of future development. The day-to-day routines of hemotherapy services require the improvement of techniques, as the fractionation of collected blood is necessary and each donated unit may benefit several patients and allow large amounts of a certain component to be transfused. The purpose of the present work is to revise the collection, production and storage procedures and the clinical indication of the main blood components such as concentrated red blood cells, concentrated washed red blood cells, erythrocytes with low numbers of leucocytes, concentrated platelets, apheresis concentrated platelets, concentrated granulocytes, frozen fresh plasma and regular plasma and cryoprecipited. Future perspectives suggest there will be changes in transfusion therapy with its main purpose stressing an improvement of security, with an increase of manufactured products, development of non-cellular products, apheresis technology, microbial attenuation and plasma recombining proteins, which may replace plasma products within a few decades.
Blood components; hemotherapy; blood transfusion
