Objective: To survey transfusion medicine practices in 1990, to determine the distribution of defects in the transfusion process, to examine the relationship between defects and complications, and to recommend improvements in the transfusion process.
Design: A mail survey that divided the transfusion process into 24 risk-prone steps and gathered defect rates on each step, along with incidence data for eight known complications of transfusions and other demographic information.
Settings: Hospitals, independent laboratories, and blood centers that provide transfusion medicine services.
Other participants: Respondents were 1365 participants in the College of American Pathologists 1991 Blood Bank Quality Assurance Survey.
Results: While processing 6.2 million units of blood and blood products, respondents reported detecting over 88,000 defects: 41% in the preanalytic phase of testing, 55% in the postanalytic phase, and only 4% in the analytic phase, the phase to which most monitoring efforts were devoted. A median of eight steps were actively monitored by survey participants overall, whereas 96 facilities sought defects in all 24 steps.
Conclusions: Analysis of the data showed several monitoring steps provide similar information. Although monitoring of the transfusion process could not be linked with prevention of the complications studied, active surveillance does focus attention on defect-prone steps and allows testing of strategies to improve the transfusion process. We describe how defect detection systems may be improved.