Causes of Wastage of Blood and Blood Components: A Retrospective Analysis

Blood transfusion is an integral part of medical practice and is required in many surgical procedures. Human blood till date has no substitute. This emphasizes the very judicious use of blood and its components and minimal or no wastage. Total 10012 (voluntary and replacement) donors were included from August 2011 to Feb. 2014 and screened for transfusion transmissible disease. A total of 10012 blood units were collected but 446 (4.46%) of whole blood bags were discarded either because of seroreactivity, expiry or low volume. One thousand and nine(8.69%) component were discarded out of the 19648 blood components prepared .The commonest cause was expiry of the components 915(54.5%) especially the platelets because of short self life and non utilization, followed by leakage /damage which constituted 428(25.5%) of the discarded components. Three hundred and thirty seven (20.0%) the components were discarded because of seropositivity for Transfusion transmissible diseases(TTI). Strict adherence to the WHO selection and deferral criteria of donors along with proper phlebotomy technique will help to reduce the number of discarding bags because of TTI and low quantity from total collected units. Proper implementation of blood transfusion policy will helps to reduce the wastage due to non utilization of components.