A prospective randomized study of three types of platelet concentrates in patients with haematological malignancy: corrected platelet count increments and frequency of nonhaemolytic febrile transfusion reactions

We prospectively randomized 51 patients with haematological malignancy requiring platelet concentrates (PCs) to receive either single donor plateletpheresis products (SD-PC), PCs made from pooled buffy coats (BC-PC) or pooled units of platelets made by the platelet-rich plasma method (PRP-PC). The leucocyte content of each type of PC was 0.33 (0.03–13.5), 5.68 (0.19–99.0) and 365 (65–910) × 106; median (range), respectively; P < 0.0001. All red cell transfusions were leucodepleted by filtration. Statistical comparison of the probability of the occurrence of a nonhaemolytic febrile transfusion reaction (NHFTR) following transfusion of PCs in patients in each group showed a significant decrease for the SD-PC and BC-PC groups (0.031 and 0.038, respectively) when compared with PRP-PC (0.171); P =0.001. The actual corrected platelet count increments (CCI) at 1–6 and 18–24 h post-transfusion for all three types of PC did not differ significantly. We conclude that transfusion of PRP-PC is associated with a significant increase in NHFTR.