Effectiveness of confidential self-exclusion (CSE) and failed options on blood donation safety in Sari organization of blood transfusion, 2005

Blood donation safety is one of the basic goals of the organization of blood transfusion in the world. Self-exclusion and failed options are additional screening tests to routine diagnostic tests which is performed to detect the transmitted infection through blood or blood products. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of these systems on the improvement of blood donation safety in Sari organization of blood transfusion. A cross- sectional study was carried out using serologic results of donors who used confidential self-exclusion (CSE) and failed system and the results compared with usual donors (as control group). The donors were tested for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBs-Ag), hepatitis C Virus antibody (HCV-Ab) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-Ab). The information was obtained from the data bank of Sari organization of blood transfusion, 2005. The blood of 255 (1.5%) and 87 (0.5%) donors out of 17036 were excluded by failed and confidential self-exclusion methods respectively. The percentage of infection among the control group was 3% compared with 3.9% for the failed group and 9.2% for the self-exclusion donors. The findings obtained from this study indicated that the confidential self-exclusion might be a suitable method to improve blood donation safety. It also revealed that it was possible to exclude infected donors at window period.