Ever have a blood bag explode?

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Specializes in Corrections, Cardiac, Hospice.

I picked up on my old unit the other night and was transfusing a unit of blood. Special order, btw:imbar Halfway through the transfusion the pump starts alarming "air in line." So I try clamping the blood and flushing line with nss. Didn't help, pump alarmed again. I saw tiny, itty-bitty air bubbles in the tubing so I give the bag a little squeeze to get them through the area that senses for air bubbles....It was like a mass murder in the room. The bag started leaking out of the area where the donor's blood goes into the bag. There was blood on the curtain, blood on my shoes, blood all over the walls and floors. Man, it was bad. I have squeezed those darn bags many times over the last 10 years, never had that happen. Any similar experiences?

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Specializes in Med/Surg/Oncology.

what on earth?! I have never had that or seen that happen, something must have been wrong with the packaging, that should not happen, should it?

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Specializes in Utilization Management.

*Note to self: Don't ever squeeze another blood bag again*

Reason why I don't get it--sometimes we have to use those pressure bags to squeeze the PRBCs in. Why yours broke and we haven't had a problem is the mystery.

Maybe txRN07 has something there: the bag was defective.

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Specializes in ICU, Psych.

Sorry to hear that happened to you. Must have been a manufacture error, at least one would hope it was the bag and not the blood giving off gases from fermentation.

I had this happen to me while squeezing in a bag of NS once, was standing beside the Code Dr and most of it got him, he is one with a good humor and laughed it off. Not sure how that would have went if it would have been PRBCs.

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Specializes in Ortho, Case Management, blabla.

When I was in school one of my classmates spiked a bag of blood - spiked it too hard - and ended up putting a giant hole in the bag... got a freezing cold spray of blood all over her nice white student nurse get-up/face/arms. We heard a scream and then her walking out of some patient's room looking like that...It looked like the texas chainsaw massacre. :uhoh21:

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Not explode but leak: I hung a bag of blood on an ER pt, and as I was standing there with my arm up, hanging the bag on the hook from the ceiling, the spike slid out! Serious, it came right out. There I am with blood running down my arm into my sleeve!

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Specializes in ICU, SDU, OR, RR, Ortho, Hospice RN.

I am so sorry this happened to you but the vision in my head had me :lol2: :lol2:

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Specializes in Jack of all trades, and still learning.

OMG, never! To say 'you poor thing' is an understatement! How awful for you!

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Actually yes.. one of the anesthesia techs was messing around with a bag of blood under pressure during a surgery. The spike came out and blood sprayed all over the OR like a balloon releasing it's air while you are holding it. I just happened to be walking by the OR and noticed a pool of blood flowing out from under the door into the hallway. I thought that it was odd and looked through the window in the door and saw the anesthesia tech standing there drenched in blood. All I could think of was the movie "Carrie" where she gets the bucket of blood dumped on her head. It made a big mess and took hours to clean up. It wasn't funny at the time but I wished I would have grabbed a camera and took a picture of it because about 6 months later we teased her about it one day......and we all had a laugh over it. A picture would have been nice.

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Specializes in Emergency.

NEVER! And we use the pressure cuffs too! EEKIES! One of my nursing instructors back in the day had a bloodbag that had some type of rubber band for pressure shoot the spike tubing out and splatter her. She said the pt looked up and told her she looked like she had the measles. They BOTH had a good long laugh about it.

I like the bag defect theory...too strange to get air in a blood line and then have it go bonkers when you squeezed it. SOMETHING wasn't quite right.

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I was squeezing the blood bag trying to get it to go thru the leukocyte filter a little faster (? I think that's what it was called-it was several years ago), and the filter and the bag separated spraying the room with blood. What a mess! Blood everywhere! I thought I would never get all that blood cleaned up. I wasn't even squeezing it that hard. Learned a lesson there.

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now here's another question, assuming that the blood has already been tested and all that... would you have to go to the ER and file an incident report and follow up for possible HEP/HIV exposure?

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