Prevalence of Selected Red Blood Cell Abnormalities in Donated Blood at The Regional Blood Transfusion Centre – Mombasa, Kenya

Abstract

Blood transfusion is an important clinical intervention during surgery and in the treatment of severe tissue hypoxia. During transfusion, components of blood including red blood cells, Platelets or plasma are directly administered into the recipient to alleviate conditions such as anaemia and haemostatic deficiencies. Effective blood transfusions will positively affect prognosis. The efficacy of a red blood cell unit depends on the amount of blood delivered, the quality of cells and the life span of a given unit. These parameters are assayed during blood donation except for the red cell abnormalities such as sickle cell, Glucose 6-Phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and other parameters that have an impact on the quality of red cells delivered and their life span. This cross-sectional study was done at the regional blood transfusion centre, Mombasa and the Technical University of Mombasa. Consecutive blood samples were analyzed for selected red cell parameters. The objective of this study was to determine the occurrence of red cell abnormalities in donor blood. Six hundred and seventy-six samples were analyzed. A significance level of p<0.05 was set for all statistics. The study found that 31.07% of the donor samples had abnormal values. There was a significant variation (t - 0.03, CI 95%) in the total red blood cell count. A significant Pearson’s positive correlation was realized between the osmotic fragility and haemoglobin concentration (r= .195, and p< 0.001). The study also found that Hb values were not the same across the G6PD conditions (P = 0.033, CI 95%). The study concludes that significant proportion of donated red cells had an abnormality. These results point towards RBC indices or morphological Red cell abnormality. The study recommends that hospital blood banks should screen for red blood cell abnormalities before transfusion. Further studies should be done to guide in the development of strategies that will filter out these abnormalities and investigate the effect of these abnormalities to the recipient.