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@#Introduction: Cord blood (CB) is rich in hematopoietic stem cells. There has been significant growth in cord blood banks (CBBs) throughout the world. In Malaysia, the CB units cryopreserved in public CBB is below its optimal level. Lack of knowledge about CB banking among mothers in other countries influenced their decision to donate CB, however, there is no local data to support this in Malaysia. Moreover, no validated and reliable tool is available for measuring local women’s knowledge about CB banking. In this study, a questionnaire to assess pregnant women’s knowledge about CB banking was developed and validated. Method: Several steps were taken to develop the knowledge items in the questionnaire which includes comprehensive literature review, content validity by a panel of experts, and face validity by a group of pregnant women. The questionnaire was developed in Malay language and contained 18 items. After modifications, the self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 121 pregnant women to assess its psychometric properties using two-parameter logistic item response theory analysis and internal consistency reliability analysis. Results: The majority of the knowledge items showed acceptable difficulty and discriminatory values. The Cronbach’s alpha and ICC values were 0.831 and 0.887, respectively, indicating good reliability. All 18 knowledge items were retained for the final version of the questionnaire. Conclusion: The newly developed questionnaire demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties and can be used as a reliable tool to assess knowledge about CB banking among pregnant women in the local population.
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@#Introduction: Unsafe blood products cause transfusion-transmissible infections. A good knowledge and perception about blood safety issues is crucial to ensure safe blood supply. The objective is to develop and validate a questionnaire about the knowledge and perception among blood donors on blood safety issues. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 130 blood donors who attended the National Blood Centre, Kuala Lumpur in April and May 2018. The questionnaire was developed in the Malay language after extensive literature search. The self-administrated questionnaire consisted 39 items which required around 20 minutes to complete. The validation involved content validity, construct validity using exploratory factor analysis and reliability using test-retest analysis in IBM SPSS statistics. The same group of respondents was retested after two weeks using the same questionnaire. Results: Content validity was established through multidisciplinary expert meeting and two content reviewers. The factors loadings of all questionnaires were more than 0.40. Knowledge questions were divided into three domains; perception questions were divided into four domains. The intraclass correlation (ICC) values of the test-retest were more than 0.80 for the three knowledge domains and more than 0.60 for the four perception domains. The third domain of the perception section which consisted two questions had the lowest ICC value of 0.686 (95% CI 0.583-0.767). One of the questions was restructured to improve clarity. Conclusions: The questionnaire on knowledge and perception on blood safety issues has good validity and reliability, with appropriate items which warranted its utilization among blood donors.
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@#Background: Unsafe blood products may cause transfusion-transmissible infections. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and perceptions of blood donors regarding blood safety. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the Kelantan state of Malaysia. The questionnaire comprised 39 questions that covered areas such as donors’ social demographic information, knowledge of transfusion-transmitted diseases, blood screening and donor eligibility and perceptions towards blood safety. The knowledge score was categorised as good or poor. Results: Of the 450 distributed questionnaires, 389 were suitable for analysis. Only 18.5% of the donors had good knowledge, with 81.5% having poor knowledge. Less than 30% were aware that people with multiple sexual partners, bisexual people and male homosexual people are permanently deferred from blood donation. Only 29.4% agreed that donors are responsible if their blood causes infection. Furthermore, 39.3% assumed that they could check their HIV status through blood donation, and 10.3% and 5.4% of the respondents believed that donors are free from infection if they wear a condom during sex or only have oral sex when involved in prostitution, respectively. Conclusion: Poor knowledge and notable misperceptions concerning safe blood donation were found among blood donors. The Ministry of Health should incorporate safe blood education in future public awareness programmes.
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Abstract@#Introduction: Inadequate mixing during the blood collection process might affect the quality of platelet concentrates (PCs). Currently, two different mixing methods are used during whole blood collection: manual mixing and mixing using an automated blood collection mixer. However, the cost between manual and automated blood collection mixer differed largely and pose a dilemma for a blood transfusion service. The objective of this study was to evaluate PCs quality using either manual mixing or automated procedure. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Advanced Medical and Dental Institute, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Thirty eligible participants aged 20 to 45 were included in this study, and a unit of 450 mL whole blood was collected from each participant. Fifteen units of whole blood were mixed by an automated blood collection mixer and the other 15 units were mixed using the manual mixing. All PCs were produced from platelet-rich plasma and stored at 20–24°C for 5 days. Quality parameters such as platelet count, leucocyte count, and pH were measured for each PCs on day 1 and day 5. Results: Platelet count on day 1 was significantly higher than on day 5 (p = 0.01) for both mixing methods. There was no statistically significant difference in any of the PCs quality parameters between the two types of mixing methods at either day 1 or day 5 of storage (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Comparable PCs quality is achieved from both manual mixing and automated procedures.