How are Blood Bags Tested Before its Application?

Blood transfusion has now become a very common medical practice, required in many treatments. Till a few years back, the blood used for transfusion was stored in glass bottles, which supposedly were safe to use. This led to the pyrogenic contamination of the blood, due to inappropriate cleaning. This was later replaced by PVC. This was a disposable component and makes the transportation easy.

Blood bags are very crucial for health care industry. As they are designed for carrying blood, a stringent testing procedure is followed to declare them fit to use. They are tested in such a way that after prescribed time limit, the raw material should not change its properties. This might result in the contamination of the blood inside the bag. And, once the bags are filled with the fluid, they cannot undergo any testing. Thus, we cannot take any chance with the packings in this case, as this could be life threatening and the onus will have to bear by the medical staff.

They are specially tested for their life, how they would behave after some time has passed. UV light accelerated weather tester simulates lighting conditions.

It is a well-known fact that materials show a volatile behaviour in presence of this light. This chamber has 8 lights and thus creating a very stressful environment for testing. The UV light might behave negatively on the blood packed inside the bags, and health care experts don’t want to do that. This is why it becomes very important that blood bags should not allow the light to pass through it. On the other hand, the bags are made up of polymer which might get affected by the UV light. Thus, the raw materials used in the manufacturing must be resistant to this light. The absorbance of the UV light by the blood bag is clearly defined in the ISO standard 3826.

UV light accelerated weather tester is a closed cabinet and has 8 UV light source to create accelerated conditions. Obviously, the blood bags would never be exposed to such conditions, but this test assesses the behaviour for the long run. The test material is placed inside the chamber and test process starts for certain hours. A visual inspection will determine how the bags respond to the conditions. In another way, the bag is filled with fluid and impact of light on the fluid will determine the absorbance of blood bags.

For more information about the chamber, contact us.