[Can patients treated with therapeutic bloodletting become blood donors?].

BACKGROUND

Blood letting is an important form of treatment in some diseases, e.g. haemochromatosis and polycytaemia rubra vera. In our hospital, this treatment takes place in the blood bank. If the blood collected from these patients could be used for transfusion, it would help reduce the present blood shortage.

MATERIAL AND

METHODS

We examined the referral letters for all patients treated with blood letting during a twelve-month period in two hospitals to see how often the referrals gave information that would exclude the patient as a blood donor.

RESULTS

1,116 units of blood were collected from 177 patients. 122 patients treated with 696 bloodlettings did have information in their referral letter which indicated that they would be unsuitable as blood donors.

DISCUSSION: 55 of 177 patients treated with blood letting could have been further evaluated in order to determine whether they fulfilled the criteria for blood donors. The impact of accepting patients as blood donors could be significant. Patients in need of blood letting are not voluntary, unpaid donors and additional steps are required to compensate for this fact.