Implementation of the Uniform Donor History Questionnaire across the American Red Cross Blood Services: increased deferral among repeat presenters but no measurable impact on blood safety.
BACKGROUND
The Uniform Donor History Questionnaire (UDHQ) was implemented across the American Red Cross Blood Services in 2005. This study assessed the potential impact of changes inherent in UDHQ implementation on deferral and on prevalence of infectious disease markers among donated units.


METHODS
Deferral and donation records were extracted and analyzed for the period of April 1, 2005, to September 30, 2005, after the implementation of the UDHQ and for the same period in the previous year. For comparison, most of the questions in the UDHQ were aligned with corresponding questions in the previous questionnaire, although such alignment could not be exact because of changes in the wording and organization of the questions.


RESULTS
From 2004 (1 year previously) to 2005 (UDHQ), significant changes in deferral rate were observed for different groups of deferral questions, with the largest being +99.2 percent for "man who had sex with another man" and +92.0 percent for "receipt of blood, tissue, organ, or clotting factor concentrates or a bleeding condition or a blood disease" among repeat presenters. Changes to the educational material and the wording of questions, elimination of compound questions, and other concurrent changes could have contributed to the changed deferral rates. There was no significant change in prevalence rates of major infectious disease markers.


CONCLUSIONS
Implementation of the UDHQ impacted on donor deferral, including increased deferral among repeat presenters. No significant impact was observed for infectious disease marker rates. Further monitoring for longer-term trends is recommended.
Zou
Shimian
S
American Red Cross Blood Services, Rockville, Maryland 20855, USA. zous@usa.redcross.org
Eder
Anne F
AF
Musavi
Fatemeh
F
Notari Iv
Edward P
EP
Fang
Chyang T
CT
Dodd
Roger Y
RY
D001771:Blood Banks; D001782:Blood Donors; D006801:Humans; D017053:Infection Control; D007239:Infections / Q000209:etiology; D015995:Prevalence; D012011:Red Cross; D012449:Safety / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards