Two-years' experience with a Canadian hospital-based autologous blood donor programme.

Two years' experience with a hospital-based autologous blood donor programme is described. Of 511 patients enrolled, 86% underwent surgery without use of allogeneic blood, and 19% of collected units were not used. For six common procedures, a 'target' autologous blood schedule of 2 or 3 units (depending on the procedure) was set. If an extra unit for each of 407 patients had been collected (i.e. 3 or 4), an additional 20 patients would have been protected from exposure to allogeneic blood at a cost of 387 unnecessary collections. The difference between the mean haemoglobin (Hb) concentration at entry to the programme and the mean pre-operative Hb concentration was not clinically important and only 25 of 511 patients were deferred on account of anaemia after one or more donations. The autologous blood used represents 3.8% of the units of blood or packed red blood cells transfused during the 2 years of study. Adverse (vasovagal) reactions were infrequent (2.2%) in spite of liberal acceptance criteria.