Strategies to recruit plateletpheresis donors from a registry of HLA-typed, unrelated, bone marrow donors.
Rising demand for single-donor platelet components--from random donors, to maintain platelet inventories, or from HLA-compatible donors, to support alloimmune platelet-refractory patients--necessitated increasing the size of a community plateletpheresis donor registry. This study compares two strategies for recruiting whole-blood donors into a plateletpheresis program. The whole-blood donors who were asked to participate in this study had recently joined an unrelated bone marrow donor registry and had been HLA-typed as part of that process. An in-person recruitment strategy, which was time-intensive for the apheresis donor coordinator, served as the standard. A by-mail strategy involved the mailing of recruitment materials to marrow-donor registry participants. Marrow-donor registry participants were approached about apheresis participation after they had indicated an interest in the plateletpheresis program by returning a tear-off section of an informational brochure that was sent to them along with their marrow-donor registry materials. A total of 852 marrow-donor registry participants were randomly assigned to one of two recruitment strategies, and the recruitment rates were the same (46%) for both methods. In addition, levels of apheresis participation and attrition rates of donors recruited by either strategy were comparable. Thus, the simple strategy of mailing information about a plateletpheresis program is a very cost-effective method of recruiting donors.
Bolgiano
D C
DC
Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle, Washington.
Smith
S
S
Slichter
S J
SJ
D001782:Blood Donors / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D001853:Bone Marrow; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000032:analysis; D006650:Histocompatibility Testing; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008722:Methods; D010352:Patient Dropouts; D010358:Patient Participation; D010865:Pilot Projects; D010983:Plateletpheresis; D012042:Registries
D006680:HLA Antigens