A few months ago I showed up to donate blood and said I was willing to do any type of donation. I ended up getting dragged into donating platelets instead, which I admit I hadn't even realized was an option. I'm trying to donate platelets more, now that I realize I can do it in between whole blood donations. I admit I find the whole process far more annoying than whole blood.
However, what I find odd is how I've gotten far more pressure to come back to donate platelets than I ever did donating whole blood. The first time they clearly pushed me into donating platelets over whole blood even when I really didn't know anything about it. I just went along to help out however they wanted me to.
This last time I showed up and told them that I thought I was due to donate whole blood. If so, I wanted to donoate whole blood since I didn't have time for platelets. However, I agreed to donate platelets if I wasn't due for whole blood. Again they seemed very eager to get me to donate platelets, to the point of seeming being really disappointing when I ended up donating whole blood.
It's inconvenient, to say the least, to loose so much time multiple times a month. I'm happy to do it to help, but I'd at least like to have an idea of exactly how much I am helping when I do it.
So, is there a reason they seem so eager to get platelet donations? Would it do more good to never donate whole blood and only ever do platelets? Can anyone give me an estimation of how much good a platelet donation does on average (not the best case, but the average case of each donation from a B+ donor)?
To try to make this easier, I finally sat down and tried to answer another question of mine: How many lives are saved from one donation of blood? See my answer to it.
The numbers are not guaranteed by me; I am a layman who doesn't really know much about the medicine behind the statistics I looked up. However, it may give an answer some basis for comparison of the two options IF any of my numbers are right.