REASONS FOR NOT ADMITTING BLOOD DONORS IN THE TEHRAN BLOOD TRANSFUSION CENTER

Increasing number of patients with hematologic transmissible infectious diseases, such as, AIDS mandates adopting a special strategy to provide safe blood products. Selection of those donors with the fewest risk factors would be the best strategy. In this study, causes and frequencies of not admitting potential blood donors were reviewed. In a period of 6 months from Autumn 1999 to Winter 2000, information about donor age, sex, occupation and marital status, and the causes for not admitting were obtained and analyzed by SPSS 10 software. Out of the 163,418 potential donors, 32,226 (21.1%) could not donate their blood; among those, 80.7 % were males and 19.35% females, 45.7% were single and 54.3% married. Nearly 5% of donors refused to donate their blood after formally completing the application forms and reading the blood transfusion centre’s brochure. Of those rejected, 99% had a known pathology as the cause of rejection. Also of the rejected donors, 91.2% were deferred temporarily and 8.8% permanently; 15.5% had had unsafe previous sexual contact which was the most common cause of rejection; 12.4% were currently consuming an antibiotic; 11.5% had hypotension; and 7.8% had already done Hejamat pilgrimage. Most of the rejected donors were under 25 years old (40.7%) and most (33.1%) were business people. It seems that the rate of blood deferral in Tehran is very high. To decrease this rate we have to consider the main causes of rejection, which are mostly temporary, and then choose the best way to prevent them.