Blood transfusion practices and the need assessment for blood components therapy in jimma university medical center jimma, south west Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Blood transfusion is a therapeutic admistration of blood or its therapeutic components , to be used only if no other reasonable means of replacing low blood and blood components are available.In a current medical practice in different corners of a world, whole blood is rarely given under emergency. In our context however; whole blood is the only component under all circumstances due to negligence and adherences to an older protocol both by the physician and the regional blood bank. However, in modern transfusion practices, donated blood should be fractionated into separate therapeutic components. Some of which, includes plasma, albumin, and clotting factor VIII can be frozen or lyophilized and kept for a very long time or even indefinitely. Others, like platelets, must be used within few days of preparation. The most commonly transfused component is the packed red cell, followed by platelet concentrate, plasma, immunoglobulins, and clotting factor VIII, whereas,white blood cells are rarely transfused. Blood component therapy also allows the judicious use of this scarce human resource and it starts right from assessing the need of transfusion, using the appropriate components, avoiding unnecessary transfusions, to reprimanding single unit blood transfusion. Expectedly, a wide gap exists between blood donation and utilization; hence in the interest of our community the right patient should get the right component at the right time. Objective: To assess the usage of blood and its therapeutic components according to the clinical indication and reduce in appropriate usage. Method: Cross sectional study was conducted on a 425 blood transfusion episodes consecutively from February to June 2018. Socio-demographic and clinical data was collected by structured checklists and questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were applied to describe the results. Frequency tables and descriptive summaries were used to describe variables. Results: Overall 22.1% of the transfusion episodes were found to be inappropriate, contributed by various factors related to the practices, prescribers and recipients. Conclusion: The overall prevalence of appropriate clinical utilization of blood products in this study indicated that there is a huge gap that should be minimized; seek great attention to stablish institutional blood transfusion committee and also guideline for appropriate clinical utilization of blood products for the people who need them most.