The potency and safety of transfusable red blood cells

Can we identify approaches to improve potency and/or safety of transfusable RBCs?

42 day pre-transfusion storage of RBCs maximizes utilization, while minimizing waste. However, RBCs undergo changes during collection, manipulation and storage that may reduce their potency or safety. Progress in understanding markers that predict transfusion success at the time of collection and with storage remains slow. New technologies have been proposed that may mitigate the storage lesion through new ways to process/prepare RBCs for transfusion.