One of the biggest challenges for blood banks and trauma centers is throughput. How quickly can clinicians deliver thawed plasma to patients in need? Consider safe-handling concerns, workflow complexity and the short-lived viability of thawed plasma — getting plasma to a patient, safely and efficiently, is enormously complicated. The current system built around slow, labor-intensive water bath thawing methods is rife with problems and in desperate need of innovation.
While water bath thawing devices have multiple chambers and can deliver considerable volumes of plasma
with each thawing cycle, they lose any speed advantage through slow processes and the many inconveniences inherent with warm water. To thaw plasma, water must preheat before the plasma can even be placed into the bath and you need loads of energy to keep the water heated all day long.
If any plasma bags are damaged during the process and leak, the entire contents of the bath are contaminated, meaning all the plasma in all the bags must be discarded before the unit can be sanitized, refilled, and brought back up to temperature. The enormous waste, coupled with the mess and cumbersomeness that comes with an enormous bath of water, make water bath plasma thawing a bad solution for a critically important task.
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The Next Generation of Plasma Thawing
Enter ZipThaw. ZipThaw’s dry thawing technology means you can rapidly deliver thawed plasma to patients with an easier process that’s safe and simple. Place a frozen unit in a ZipSleeve anti-contamination barrier, slide it in one of the two independently operated chambers, and press a button. 15 minutes later your plasma is thawed to temperature ready for transfusion. No lengthy pre-heating, no recovery time, no water splashes or messes to clean up. If only ice-free plasma is required for later use, that can be achieved in 6-7 minutes.
You can also pick up a ZipThaw and move it where you need it. This means you can rethink your entire workflow to have point-of-care thawing, lab thawing, thawing on a cart and more. Just pick up the device, move it and plug it in to a standard outlet — no recalibration needed.
With two independent thawing chambers and ZipSleeve technology, ZipThaw eliminates the possibility of wasted plasma from a single bag that contaminates several others. ZipThaw’s increased speed, almost zero maintenance and ease means it delivers twice as much transfusion-ready plasma per hour as a standard water bath.
ZipThaw has two presets: Ice Free (15°C) and Transfusion Thaw (31°C). ZipThaw accurately measures the temperature of the product being thawed, not the temperature of the water surrounding it like in a standard water bath. You can also manually operate the thaw to any temperature below 31°C. This means you can rapidly bring frozen plasma to Ice Free temperatures for refrigeration storage in just minutes:
Initial Preheat: 5 minutes
• Thaw to 15°C: 7 minutes
• Recovery: 3 minutes
• 142 minutes delivers 28 units
• Nearly 12 units per hour
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For transfusion thawing, ZipThaw delivers 16 thawed units in just 146 minutes. Or about 7 units per hour.
Initial Preheat: 5 minutes
• Thaw to 31°C: 15 minutes
• Recovery: 3 minutes
• 146 minutes delivers 16 units
• 6.6 units per hour
Conclusion
Water baths thaw plasma to a transfusion-ready temperature of 31°C at a rate of 3.3 units per hour. The ZipThaw doubles that, with 6.6 units ready in an hour, without the maintenance, mess, or waste.
ZipThaw comes with a 3 year full replacement warranty and is FDA cleared, AABB Standards-Compliance, has CE Mark, ISO & UL approval.
Labs around the world are using ZipThaw to thaw plasma every day, including US military hospitals and research labs, blood banks and hospitals across the United States and beyond. ZipThaw and ZipSleeve are made in the USA at FDA audited manufacturing facilities in Minnesota and Massachusetts.
To order ZipThaw, please email us at info@fremonscientific.com.