Tabba Heart Institute starts NAT testing facility

KARACHI: Tabba Heart Institute is proud to introduce the Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) facility at its blood bank for screening donors blood and its components intended for use in surgeries or blood crises. This makes Tabba Heart Institute the 1st cardiac care hospital in Pakistan to use this technology.

Tabba Heart Institute, being the leading private cardiac care hospital of Pakistan, is well known for providing world class standard healthcare and quality treatment at an affordable cost.

Blood banking and patient safety is a primary and critical component of patient care for hospital management, especially when promoting quality of care through multi disciplinary team approach.

Our patient population at THI especially those coming for the open heart surgeries will now have access to these NAT tested blood products, which give us an edge in providing safe blood to the patients.

The NAT Testing is an advanced technique to screen blood for blood transfusion diseases. With this technique, blood borne communicable diseases can be detected even within its window period if someone (donor) is infected by these pathogens. This will ensure safest blood to patients.

Window period is the time duration when the donor is exposed to a virus until antibodies against the virus are developed and the risk of infection in donated blood can be increased. . That is, if the blood is donated during the window period, when the virus and its anti-bodies are not detectable by either of the conventional antibody screening tests but the infectious agent may be present in the blood of the donor, this can infect 3 other patients and the disease can transmit and increase its range in this way.***