BMJ 2000;321:704 ( 16 September )

Letters

Transfusion transmitted infection

    Did authors systematically underestimate risks of transfusion?
    Authors' reply

Did authors systematically underestimate risks of transfusion?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---There are three different ways of estimating the residual risk of infections transmitted by blood transfusion: follow up of recipients of the blood; screening donated blood with more sensitive tests than routinely used (for example, nucleic acid amplification); and estimating the number of undetectable infectious units from seroconversions of repeat donors.

In their prospective follow up study of 5579 out of 9220 patients Regan et al did not detect a single transfusion transmitted infection.1 In view of estimated risks of lower than 1 in 100 000 for transmission of hepatitis B and C viruses and lower than 1 in 1 million for transmission of HIV, however, such a result was not unexpected. The estimate would change dramatically if only one of the 657 participants not followed up because of death or of the 2734 participants not followed up because they were too ill to participate died or was too ill because of transfusion transmitted infection.

. . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Prospective investigation of transfusion transmitted infection in recipients of over 20 000 units of blood
Fiona A M Regan, Patricia Hewitt, John A J Barbara, and Marcela Contreras
BMJ 2000 320: 403-406. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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