Analysis of Blood donor deferrals in the south west region of Maharashtra: A retrospective study
Suchita V Deshmukh, Sunita B Patil, Pradnya M Chimankar, Trupti K Gade and Vinayak J Deshmukh
Background: Blood donation is a noble act that saves millions of lives every day. Blood donor selection is the most crucial step, not only for the safety of the donor himself but for the recipient and health care workers involved in the process of blood transfusion. During the process of donor selection, the donor can be rejected based on the temporary or permanent deferral causes, this leads to precise loss of donors and blood units. The aim of this study is to analyze the different causes for donor deferrals and deferral rates in our blood bank.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was done from, January 2018 to December 2019, in our blood bank at Kolhapur District, Maharashtra. The data and information of deferred donors were retrieved from deferral donor register maintained by the blood bank and then analyzed further by using MS excel software.
Results: A total of 13981 blood donors were registered in our Blood Bank out of which 13676 (97.81%) were males and 305 (2.18%) were females. Among 13981 blood donors, 13621 (97.42%) were accepted for blood donation and 360 (2.57%) were rejected due to various reasons. A total of 340 (94.44%) donors were deferred for temporary causes and 20 (5.55%) were deferred for permanent causes.
Conclusion: Increased awareness among the voluntary donors regarding deferral criteria is necessary to decrease the deferral rate in the donor population in this particular region would help greatly in blood donor recruitment efforts, especially, temporarily deferral donors who can return back to donor pool. Though there are many studies conducted to analyze patterns of donor deferral it is necessary that every blood bank should analyze rates and patterns of donor deferral especially due to temporary reasons can be avoided by conducting awareness programs.
