Analysis of Blood Donors in a Tertiary Care Hospital as a Fixed Collection Site

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Blood transfusion is important when treating patients with anemia or bleeding; thus, supply of blood components should be stable prior to transfusion. To recruit donors, blood donation sites should be conveniently located. This study evaluated factors responsible for increased donation rates in hospitals and the characteristics of the donors in hospital blood banks without a fixed blood collection site nearby. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 687 blood donations at a blood donation center in Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital (PNUYH) from March 2011 to June 2016. A total of 3,053,695 blood donors listed in the 2014 Korean Red Cross Annual Report were compared to donors in PNUYH. We analyzed the age distribution of donor at blood donation centers from Korean Red Cross according to presence and number of high school and college. RESULTS: Comparison with total blood donors in Korea revealed that there were more blood donors in their thirties, office workers and business owners at PNUYH (P<0.001). The percentage of younger donors in their twenties differed significantly according to the presence of a college within a 4 km radius of the blood donation center (P=0.03). The presence of a high school did not affect the proportion of teenage donors (P=0.833). CONCLUSION: The blood donation rate at our medical institution without fixed blood collection sites nearby increased. A regional hospital may be used as a blood collection site to recruit donors in areas in which there are no fixed blood donation centers.