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Definition

Pheresis is a blood purification process that consists of:

• drawing blood,
• separating red cells, plasma, platelets, and cryoprecipitated antihemophilic factor,
• isolating the blood component needed to diagnose a suspected abnormality or treat a known disease,
• and returning the remaining blood to the donor.

Purpose

Because most of the blood is returned to the donor, pheresis enables an individual to donate more of a specific component. The two main types of pheresis are removal of platelets (plateletpheresis)and removal of plasma (plasmapheresis).

Plateletpheresis

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