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HOW SAFE IS THE BLOOD DONOR POOL?

Many strategies are now used to prevent infected blood from being donated in the U.S., including intense donor education, history-based screening procedures, and the "confidential unit exclusion" system, which allows donors to privately indicate that their blood may not be suitable for transfusion. But are these measures enough? To estimate the prevalence of undetected risks, these researchers mailed anonymous surveys to 50,162 blood donors.

Sixty-nine percent of the sample responded. Two percent of respondents reported a risk factor that should have resulted in deferral of donation, such as sex with a high-risk partner within the past year. Deferrable risk behaviors were 1.4 times as likely among men than women, 1.6 times as likely among first-time versus repeat donors, and 7.6 times as likely among those who used the confidential unit exclusion option. Among men, the most prevalent deferrable risk behaviors were a history of intravenous drug use (69/10,000), sexual contact with a homosexually active man since 1977 (57/10,000), and having paid women for sex within the past year (52/10,000). Among women, the most prevalent risk was sexual contact with an intravenous drug user (51/10,000).

Comment: These data demonstrate that there is a low but finite prevalence of deferrable risk factors among the donor pool, which might be reduced through use of blinded questionnaires and other strategies that protect patient confidentiality.

— TH Lee

Published in Journal Watch General Medicine March 28, 1997

Citation(s):

Williams AE et al. Estimates of infectious disease risk factors in US blood donors. JAMA 1997 Mar 26 277 967-972.

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