Positivity of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C in patients enrolled in a confidential self-exclusion system of blood donation: a cross-sectional analytical study.

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Selection of healthy blood donors is essential to ensure blood safety. A confidential self-exclusion (CSE) system was designed so that high-risk donors could confidentially exclude their blood from use in transfusions. This study aimed to compare the demographic characteristics and the results from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B surface (HBS) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening tests on donors who opted to get into and out of CSE. DESIGN AND SETTING Analytical cross-sectional study on all volunteer donors at Shiraz Blood Transfusion Organization from March 21, 2006, to March 21, 2008. METHODS The results from the abovementioned tests were compared between donors who opted into and out of CSE. RESULTS 100,148 donors in 2006 and 104,271 in 2007 gave blood. Among these donors, respectively, 829 (0.82%) and 592 (0.57%) opted for the CSE. The prevalence of HIV antibodies, HBS antigens and HCV antibodies in CSE donors was significantly higher than in donors who did not choose CSE (p < 0.05). The prevalence of at least one of these three infections among CSE donors was 3.12% in 2006 and 3.04% in 2007, and was significantly higher than the prevalence among non-CSE donors (0.58% and 0.57%, respectively). CONCLUSION Because of the higher prevalence of HBS, HCV and HIV positivity in blood donors who chose the CSE option, offering CSE to blood donors could be a potentially useful method for improving blood safety, since it could increase the detection of infected blood during the window period.