Sero prevalence and trends of TTI in voluntary and replacement blood donors in a tertiary care hospital blood bank - A 3 year retrospective study

Background: Blood Transfusion plays a vital role in patient management and is lifesaving in many instances. It plays a pivotal role as a specialized modality of treatment and saves millions of lives worldwide each year and reduces morbidity. It is well known to be associated with a large number of complications, some of them trivial while others are life threatening, demanding for meticulous pre transfusion testing and screening. The priority objective of BTS is to ensure safe, adequate accessible efficient blood supply at all times. The magnitude of TTI varies from country to country and depends directly on the TTI load of society and also effective screening of donors at blood bank. Materials and methods: A retrospective study was conducted in our hospital blood bank from 2014-1016, to study the sero- prevalence and trends in TTI, including HIV, HBV, HCV, VDRL, and malaria. The total number of voluntary and replacement donors increased steadily in 3 years. Results: The sero- prevalence of HBV, HCV and HIV decreased steadily over 3 years, whereas incidence of syphilis increased steadily. HBV was noted to be more in voluntary donors than in replacement donors. Blood unit utilization index was calculated and ranged from 90.9% in 2014 to 88.9% in 2015 and 91.6% in 2016. Most common cause for discard of the blood units was TTI followed by expiry of products. Conclusion: Strict selection of blood donors is mandatory and is recommended to ensure safe blood supply. Voluntary blood donations need to be increased to decrease the incidence of TTI.