INFECTIOUS-DISEASE MARKERS IN VARIOUS GROUPS OF DONORS

A number of studies have commented on the inadvisability of transfusin g unused blood given by autologous and directed donors to patients oth er than those for whom the blood was originally given (crossing over). It has been stated that these bloods are dangerous and should not be used for allogeneic transfusion. To test this hypothesis, data were ta ken from a pool of hospital donors. These show that if the donor group s of allogeneic, directed, and autologous are further divided into set s of first time and multiple donors, the incident of infectious diseas e markers is no higher in one set than the other except for the alloge neic first time donor. Therefore, the ''dangerous'' donor is actually more likely a first time donor. Following this reasoning, the use of a ll blood from first time donors should be suspect.