If your donors do not know their blood type, Blood Bank of Alaska will perform blood typing for a nominal charge. Either your physician or a member of our technical staff can tell you if the donor's blood type is compatible with yours. Additional compatibility testing will be done at the hospital transfusion lab, and they will make the final determination on compatibility. Therapeutic Phlebotomy Therapeutic phlebotomy is simply the process of collecting an disposing of blood as a medical treatment. An example of this process is in the treatment of hemochromatosis which is a condition of an overabundance or high concentration of iron in the blood.
Blood is drawn from the patient and disposed of.
The patient may then be transfused with healthy blood. Therapeutic phlebotomy is used to eliminate or control a dangerous condition in the blood which must be corrected quickly or is not responding to more conventional treatments. Therapeutic phlebotomy is another tool available to doctors to combat unhealthy or dangerous levels of an element in the patient's bloodstream. Specific restrictions or requirements for this procedure are determined by your physician.