Scanning the Future of Transfusion Medicine

Transfusion medicine is a technology-based discipline undergoing continuous change. This chapter summarises recent significant changes and likely future changes to blood collection and component processing, hospital-based transfusion medicine and cellular therapies. The field of transfusion medicine underwent a paradigm shift during the acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic. Improved patient care, including management of the adverse effects associated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies such as tocilizumab for the treatment of cytokine release syndrome and long-term follow-up of patients who have already received CAR-T cell therapies, will inform the cellular therapy community and guide future directions for this preeminent cellular therapy product. The origins of cellular therapy in transfusion medicine began in the nineteenth century with transfusion of whole blood, and blood and blood component transfusion has since become a mainstay of life-saving and life-sustaining therapy.