To Determine the Blood Donor Deferral Pattern and Its Causes Among Blood Donors in Tertiary Care Hospital

Objectives: Deferrals lead to loss of precious whole blood donors and blood units available for transfusion purposes. Knowledge of rate and causes of donor deferral can guide the recruitment strategy for whole blood donors. With this background the present study was planned to determine the rate and major reasons of blood donor deferral. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out for a period of 1 year from January 2020 to December 2020 in tertiary care hospital. A total number of 22652 potential blood donors were registered for blood donation, out of which 22134 (97.7%) were accepted for blood donation 518 (2.3%) were deferred for various reasons. Criteria for deferral were decided as per guidelines given by National Health Authority. Donors who were deferral were analyzed according to age, sex, occupation, education, marital status and reasons for deferral. Results: Majority of the study subjects belonged to the age groups of 18-40 years and were married and followed Hindu religion. Among deferred donor males outnumbered the females (73.7% vs. 26.3%). The majority of deferrals were temporary deferrals 429 (82.8%) and it was seen that with increase in age, number of deferrals decreases. Conclusions: Anaemia (32.6%) was the most common reason of temporary deferral followed by medications (21%). While the most common cause of permanent deferral was high blood pressure (40%) followed by Hepatitis C Virus (11.2%) and epilepsy (7.9%). Key words: Blood Donor, Donor Deferral, Temporary Deferrals, Permanent Deferrals.