Activities of the THOR-AABB Working Party

The AABB (formerly the American Association of Blood Banks) is an international authority on transfusion medicine and tissue banking. The Trauma, Hemostasis and Oxygenation Research (THOR) Network is an international multidisciplinary network of civilian and military providers ranging from first responders and medics to critical care physicians and from basic scientists to clinical trialists. The THOR Network's vision is to improve outcomes from traumatic hemorrhagic shock by optimizing the acute phase of resuscitation. Its mission is to develop and implement best practices for prehospital care through to the completion of the acute phase of hemorrhagic shock resuscitation. Thus, there is significant overlap between the missions of these two groups. To this end, the joint THOR-AABB Working Party (WP) was created in the summer of 2016 with a view to improving patient outcomes by the establishment of a formal collaboration between these two groups. The WP has been engaged in many different endeavors, from successfully changing the AABB's standards for the administration of whole blood, to writing commentaries on the safety of unncrossmatched red blood cells and antibody titer methods and thresholds in potentially incompatible plasma products, to hosting a daylong symposium on blood product resuscitation of massively bleeding patients in conjunction with the AABB annual meeting. This review details the activities of the WP and indicates some future activities.