Determination of rate and analysis of reasons for discarding blood and blood components in a blood bank of tertiary care hospital:a retrospective study

Background: The transfusion of blood and blood components has become an integral part of patient management in modern medicine. There are no substitutes for human blood. Thus, proper utilization of blood is necessary with minimal wasting.Methods: A total of 15,333 donors donated blood during the study period of 3 years in blood bank of a tertiary care hospital, south Maharashtra from 1 st of January, 2013 to 31 st December 2015, which were screened.Results: Of the total 3355 whole blood collection, 615 blood bags were discarded. Out of these 615 bags 544 (88.45%) were discarded because of date expired, 41(6.66%) blood bags were discarded due to seropositivity for TTI and 22 (3.5%) blood bags were due under collection and leakage and other reasons contributed for 1.3%. A total of 4026 blood components were discarded against 29,715 blood components prepared during the study period. Among blood components discarded, most common units were platelets. The most common cause of discarding the blood components was expiry of date due to non-utilization were 3475 (86.31%).Conclusions: Properly implemented blood transfusion policies, training of staff as well as implementation of automation will also help to improve process and output of BTS. This would reduce the discarding of blood components and wastage due to non-conformance. These discarded bags, because they are unutilized are both financially as well as socially harmful to the blood bank.