An Analysis of Blood Component Wastage in the Ajou University Hospital

Lim, Young Ae

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The blood component wastage leads to an unnecessary expensive cost of operation, and thus we have monitored the reasons for such wastage and have taken corrective actions to reduce the amount of discarded blood.
METHODS
To evaluate the effectiveness of the corrective actions for blood wastage, rates and reasons for blood wastage were compared during the monitoring period of 78 months and the pre-monitoring period of 6 months.
RESULTS
The wastage rates of total blood components, red blood cells (RBC), platelet concentrates (PC) and fresh frozen plasmas (FFP) for the pre-monitoring were 1.23%, 1.31%, 0.59% and 2.19%, and for the monitoring period 0.4%, 0.15%, 0.19% and 1.4%, respectively. These differences were statistically significant (P<0.001). The reasons for RBC wastage were inattention of the hospital staff 26.9%, moving of blood along with the patients 20.2%, death or discharge because of hopelessness 17.8%, refusal of the patients 13.9%, mishandling of blood by hospital staff 8.7%, the change in the patient's condition 7.7% and other 4.0%. The reasons for PC wastage were death or discharge because of hopelessness 56.0%, inattention of the hospital staff 19.4%, the change in the patient's condition 16.0%, mishandling of blood by hospital staff 4.9% and refusal of the patient 3.7%.
CONCLUSION
Continuous corrective actions and monitoring of the blood wastage were effective in reducing the rates of wastage, particularly the RBC.