Whole blood

Whole blood is a term used in transfusion medicine for human blood from a standard blood donation. The blood is typically combined with an anticoagulant during the collection process, but is generally otherwise unprocessed. In the US, the capitalized "Whole Blood" means a specific standardized product for transfusion or further processing, where "whole blood" is any unmodified collected blood.

It is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, the most important medications needed in a basic health system.

Processing

Historically, blood was transfused as whole blood without further processing. Most blood banks now split the whole blood into two or more components, typically red blood cells and a plasma component such as fresh frozen plasma. Platelets for transfusion can also be prepared from a unit of whole blood. Some blood banks have replaced this with platelets collected by plateletpheresis because whole blood platelets, sometimes called "random" platelets, must be pooled from multiple donors to get enough for a therapeutic dose.