Performance of hospital blood transfusion committees in Tehran 2008-2009

Blood transfusion committees supervise the blood quality, preparation process of blood transfusion, blood transfusion indications, appropriate use of blood products, and report on blood transfusion complications. The aim of the present study was to evaluate hospital blood transfusion committees in Tehran (2008-2009). In this retrospective study, 143 hospital blood transfusion committees were reviewed. Received reports from hospital committees were the basic data for evaluation. According to the hospital blood bank regulations, appropriate data were extracted from their reports. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 19 software. Out of 143 hospitals, 38(27%) submitted their performance reports of the blood transfusion committees to the Tehran Blood Transfusion Center. Committees’ reports were studied based on six performance indicators. The most frequent reported indicator was about reports of the number of committees formed (76%) and the least frequent reported indicator was about transfusion complications (4%). Other reported indicators in descending order included preparation process of blood transfusion (66%), report statistics for the number of blood transfusions (42%), reports about blood transfusion indications (34%) and reports about training programs (28%). Mean scores of monthly transfusions in public and private hospitals were 5.7(2.5-9) and 7.1(4.3-10), respectively with significant differences (p<0.01). None of military hospitals had submitted their reports of monthly transfusion when we were conducting the present study. Findings show an increase in activities of Tehran hospital blood transfusion committees by 20% compare d with the last study in 2005-2006, but more training programs should run to improve the performance quality of the committees.