Kishwaukee Community Hospital’s blood bank stays stocked with blood components that a machine collects and automatically sorts.

Kishwaukee laboratory manager Steve Busch said the hospital receives blood from Heartland Blood Center in Aurora.

Busch said the hospital’s blood bank stocks 50 to 60 units of blood at a time and uses an average of 10 units a day. Heartland makes five deliveries a week to the hospital at $177 per unit.

Ann McKanna, vice president of new business development at Heartland Blood Center, said they use a process called apheresis to extract specific components of the blood.

During the hour-long process, a donor’s blood is filtered through a machine that extracts the desired component and returns unused blood to the donor through the same needle, McKanna said.

“You are keeping people alive. You can’t go to 7-Eleven and get this,” apheresis specialist Kathleen Dunn said.

Heartland most often extracts platelets, a blood component responsible for clotting and scabs. that is used by leukemia and cancer patients, McKanna said. Platelets must be collected more often because they have a shelf life of only five days, she said.

Dunn said apheresis is a more efficient process than whole blood collection because 10 times the amount of platelets can be collected from an individual donor. The platelets then can be given to the recipient without exposure to the number of donors involved in whole blood donation.

Without apheresis, it would take six to 10 donors to get enough platelets for one recipient, McKanna said.

Dunn said she hopes apheresis will help blood supplies remain high during traditionally slow periods because it is more efficient.

Blood shortages often occur between Thanksgiving and New Year’s when many people have the flu, she said, which disqualifies a potential donor.