Cryopreservation of Blood

Various methods of cryopreservation of blood, especially erythrocytes, are generally known and have been used for a long time. Storage of blood in the frozen state presented one of the alternative ways of storing blood components; this possibility was intensively explored in the 1950’s and 60’s, when the shelf life of non-frozen red blood cells did not exceed 21 days at those times. This time limitation significantly reduced flexibility of usage of RBC products and contributed to their dramatically high and wasteful expiration reaching up to 30%. The short shelf life of the RBCs resulted in the transfusion services not being able to meet demands of quickly evolving surgical disciplines, particularly cardiovascular surgery and radical surgical oncology. In military and emergency healthcare, utilization of these threeweek products as a way of creating blood supplies was even more complicated, almost unthinkable. The storage of frozen red blood cells therefore presented a great prospect.