Wastage of Blood Units at Tertiary Care Hospitals of Lahore

INTRODUCTION  Blood and its products are the most valuable resource in every healthcare institution. Judicial use of these limited resources is necessary and important to maintain sufficient supply. Blood products and its transfusion system are being evaluated by the use of several markers. The use of crossmatch to transfusion ratio (C/T) was first proposed by Boral Henry in 1975. Nowadays, the C/T ratio is being used by researchers to assess transfusion practices. Ideally, (C/T) ratio has to be 1.0 but it has been suggested that a ratio of 2.5 or less would indicate effective blood use. OBJECTIVE To assess crossmatch to transfusion ratio (C/T ratio), transfusion probability (%T), and transfusion index (TI) in patients of medical and surgical wards. To assess the wastage of blood components/whole blood units. METHODS  A cross-sectional study was conducted at Mayo Hospital/King Edward Medical University, Lahore, Services Hospital Lahore, and Alkhidmat Blood Bank Surrayya Azeem Hospital between January 2019 and June 2019. Nonprobability convenient sampling was performed and all collected data were entered and analyzed by using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 20). RESULTS  The total patients who were ordered to arrange blood were 1322 for which overall 2715 crossmatches had been done. Among these crossmatches, a total of 1536 of the donors were bled for from which only 815 units had been transfused to the patients. Overall C/T ratio was found to be 3.33 and the overall wastage was 38.9%. CONCLUSIONS  Blood transfusion is considered useful in the management of surgical as well as medical patients. Too many units are ordered out of which the majority are wasted due to nonutilization. There is a need for standard operating procedures for transfusion of blood. There shall be regular audits to improve the blood collection, treatment, delivery, and usage practices of this scarce resource.