​The Evaluation of Predonation Blood Donor Deferrals in a Tertiary Care Center: A 3-year Study

ABSTRACT

Background: Blood safety a major issue in the field of transfusion medicine. Persons who are disqualified or rejected fromdonating blood are known as “deferred” donors. Deferrals lead to loss of precious blood/components available for transfusion.For preventing this, we should be having knowledge of the causes of deferral and their frequency. To make blood transfusionsafe for the patients, many safety measures are undertaken and the most important is a selection of the suitable blood donors.Hence, it is important to analyze the reasons and rate for donor deferral and retain the motivated donors.Aims: This study aims to evaluate and analyze the reasons of predonation deferrals.Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, causes of donor deferral were evaluated retrospectively including both inhospital donations (and outdoor camp donations) including voluntary and replacement donors from January 2016 to December2018 in the State of the Art Model blood bank of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Memorial Hospital and Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru MemorialMedical College, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India.Results: Among 53,245 donors registered, 1894 (3.56%) were deferred from blood donation. Temporary deferrals weresignificantly higher than permanent deferral. The most common reasons for temporary deferral were anemia, followed byunderweight, recent medication, high blood pressure (BP), and low BP and so on. The common causes for permanent deferralincluded being overage, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, hepatitis B surface antigen positivity, and epilepsy and so on.Conclusion: Creating public awareness on common causes of donor deferral may help to lower the deferral rates as well aspromote the retention of potential donors.