Cord blood collection

Health care professionals are important players in the program and actively contribute to the evolution of the Public Cord Blood Bank in Québec. The role of the health care professionals who work at a collection centre is to:

take the regulatory training;
do the annual certification;
do donor recruiting among their patients;
do the collecting;
safely package and document the cord blood and plan the transporting to Héma-Québec’s laboratories.

Cord blood collection

Physicians: Cord Blood Collection (PFN-00028)

Nurses: Procedures Surrounding Cord Blood Collection (PFN-00026)

Material

Commande et entreposage du matériel pour la collecte de sang de cordon (in French only)

Cord blood shipment

Envoi du sang de cordon à Héma-Québec (ENR-03749) (in French only)

Late clamping and cord blood donation

First, the well-being of the child and mother always remains the priority. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) recommends clamping the umbilical cord after 60 seconds for full-term babies (McDonald et al., JOGC, 2022¹), but no longer than that. It has been shown that the number of stem cells obtained decreases as the time between delivery and cord clamping increases, but that clamping after 30 to 60 seconds has a minimal effect on this decrease (Ciubotariu et al., Transfusion, 2018²). The same study showed that the amount of stem cells obtained after clamping for more than 60 seconds was significantly reduced, greatly decreasing the chances that the sample obtained would contain a sufficient volume of cells that could be used for transplantation. Although delayed clamping may reduce the volume of blood collected and therefore decrease the chances that the product can be stored and used, this practice is not an obstacle to donation.