DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2016.v04i10.029

Pages: 3702-3706

Blood is a lifesaving unit. Transfusion of blood and blood components is a specialized modality of both medical and surgical emergencies and critical care management as well as routine management of diseases. It saves millions of lives each year worldwide thereby reducing the morbidity. It is well known that blood and blood components transfusion is also associated with a number of complications, some are only acute life threatening and others are potentially life threatening, Pre transfusion testing and screening particularly for transfusion transmissible infections (TTI) will reduce the burden. The objective of the present study is to assess the seroprevalence of transfusion transmitted infections (TTI) amongst the apparently healthy blood donors at the SIMSRH, Blood bank, Tumkur and also to compare the observations of the relevant studies with other parts of India. This is a retrospective study and study period is two years i.e from Jan 2014 to Dec 2015. All donor blood samples were screened for five transfusion transmissible diseases namely HBsAg, HIV, HCV, Syphilis and Malaria. Of the 3378 donors tested 28 donors were positive for serological tests amounting to 0.82% prevalence. The overall prevalence of individual TTI’s, HBsAg, HCV, HIV and Syphilis were 0.50, 0.11, 0.08 and 0.11% respectively. All the blood donors were negative for malarial parasite. All seropositive blood bags are considered as positive for TTI's and blood bags were discarded as per standard biomedical waste protocols. All blood and blood components should be tested for TTI’s to ensure safe blood supply to the recipients. With the implementation of strict donor criteria and use of sensitive screening tests, it may be possible to reduce the incidence of TTI in the Indian scenario. Studies of seroprevalence of TTI were not done in Tumkur. Hence study has been conducted to know the seroprevalence of TTI in Blood donors of a tertiary care hospital Blood bank.