10th National Transfusion Medicine Conference in Malaysia 2022 October
Land of Hornbills, Malaysia marked history by hosting 10th and largest National Transfusion Medicine Conference with theme Challenges and Opportunities in Transfusion Medicine. The event was held on from the 9th to the 11th of October 2022. MBTS with ISBT, Sarawak Convention Bureau and sponsors rendered 3 diligent days of knowledge sharing. Organizers augmented the conference by inviting prestigious speakers. 20 exhibitors, 507 attendees from throughout the world and 118 intriguing abstracts received.
Conference started with ISBT Academy Day with the topic An Introduction to ISBT and education activities by ISBT members delivered with enthusiasm by Lin Fung. Kam Wooi delivered a topic of current trend on engaging blood donors through social media in tandem with encouraging younger generation into cultivate donating blood as life style. Immunohematology topics including updates on granulocytes given by Lilian Castilho from Brazil and Veera Nadarjan from Malaysia. Erica Wood enlightened us with updates in Hemovigilance Program in Australia. Two presenters from Malaysia seized the day with intriguing topics each.
First plenary, updates on Patient Blood Management conveyed by Erica and second plenary on final day of conference delivered by Lilian on Trouble shooting in genotyping. Both speakers delivered an informative and interesting lecture, in the given limited time.
First symposium on donors and donation; speakers of this session conveyed by local presenters. Cheuk Kwong Lee imparted knowledge on understanding deferral risk among blood donation virtually.
Symposium 2 encapsulated blood components in which areas such as anemia management in clinical setting shared by Dr Jesus Relos continued with application of platelet lysates and access to safe plasma proteins in low-income countries by Thierry Burnouf.
Nelson Tsuno commenced symposium 3 with transfusion safety leading to monitoring of risk of microbial contamination of blood products. Dr Hartirathpal Kaur took transfusion safety to next level by focusing on patient bedside. Mohd Azam Mohd, concluded this session by triggering thoughts on which syphilis screening method is safer. As closure updates on genotyping QA and rare blood donor program in Asia was presented.
Accentuating the whole conference was magnificent Gala Dinner with black and red theme. Everyone who attended the event experienced breathtaking performance by local musicians. Phenomenal outcome of king and queen of the night. Great memories of the evening.
Last day of conference continued with symposium 5 in which covered clinical transfusion. New paradigm of PBM in transfusion was shared by Dr Arno Nierich. In addition, reintroduction of whole blood in acute hemorrhagic resuscitation and usage of fibrinogen concentrates in major trauma was shared.
Symposium 6 on cellular therapy which included convalescent plasma versus hyperimmune globulin. As way moving forward, details on use of engineered cells in transfusion medicine diagnostics and talk on Engineering CART- Tcells lead to different dimension of transfusion.
Final symposium 8, consists of quality, transfusion issues in Malaria diagnosis, leadership during crisis and perioperative autologous blood donation concluded the conference.
Heading home armed with immense perspective that challenges ought to be accepted as opportunities, pandemic thought us values of perceiving matters from different angles and taking transfusion to the next level. On behalf of the organizing committee would like to thank all of our presenters for engraving the 10th National Transfusion Medicine Conference a spectacular event and looking forward for the next event by Malaysia Blood Transfusion Society.
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