Acute Outcomes of Blood Transfusions in Patients Admitted to Emergency Department

Background and Blood transfusion is one of the essential and important parts of modern medicine. Blood transfusions are life saving for some patients, but some risks such as body's response should always be considered. This study was conducted to determine the incidence of transfusion outcomes and identifying the relationship between demographic profile of patients and some properties of blood products.
This descriptive study was carried out in all patients being admitted to the emergency department in Sari Imam Khomeini hospital whom underwent blood transfusions (in 2014). After recording demographic data, the history of transfusion reactions, clinical signs and symptoms, severity of side effects, the numbers of blood infusion packs over the last 24 hours were evaluated. Statistical analyses were performed in SPSS ver. 16 applying T-test and Chi square test.
A total of 961 patients had blood transfusion including 529 (55%) males and 432 (45%) females. Twelve patients (1.24%) developed acute blood transfusion complications. The most common reactions included chills (83%, n=10), fever (58%, n= 7), and dyspnea (58 %, n= 7). There were no significant correlations between the incidence of complications and other variables such as age, sex, initial hemoglobin level, previous medical history, and the age and number of injected blood products (P>0.05).
In this study, the incidence of acute transfusion reactions was lower than that in other studies in Iran. Reduction in the number of red blood cell packs injected into patients can be one of the reasons for reducing the risk of acute transfusion reactions.