Review of the Abstracts on Advances in Transfusion Medicine at Hematocon 2018.

Research issues are gradually being focussed upon in the fast evolving discipline of blood transfusion services (BTS), that was initially focussed on development of a safe and adequate blood and blood component supply. The poster presentations of ongoing research in the BTS at the Haematocon 2018 dwelt upon the knowledge, attitude and practice studies with reference to voluntary blood donation, analysis of the reasons for blood donor deferral, role of donor infectious disease screening towards early clinical intervention in the asymptomatic blood donor, the clinical trigger for red blood cells transfusion and its effect on length of stay in hospital and morbidity, maximum surgical blood ordering schedule, massive transfusion and alloimmunization apart from granulocyte transfusion and internal audit of platelet usage in BTS. Research across all dimensions of the BTS covering the entire spectrum from donors' vein to the recipients' completing the "vein to vein" transfusion chain in the Indian context will help generate evidence to lay a sound foundation for the blood services.