Abstract

 Background and Objectives

 Blood is a scarce and valuable human resource and must be prescribed wisely and based on international and regional standards. Considering the importance of blood and blood components, we carried on this study to evaluate the discard rate of blood components and the attributed causes in Ahvaz hospitals in 6 months of 2010 both the total and the individual hospital rates were estimated.

 Materials and Methods

 This cross-sectional study was conducted for the first time in Khuzestan province all the blood components return forms of all hospitals in Ahvaz city during the six months were analyzed with SPSS 14 software.

 Results

 The total amount of blood waste in our study was 12% (3124/30211). The highest rate of wastage pertained to PC (58.1%) and the lowest to WB (0.2%). The main cause of discard was attributed to being close to the expiry date (86.4%) and the minor cause was the detection of clot in blood units (0.1%). The highest discard rate of blood occurred in April (23.5%) and the lowest in July (16.1%). Shafa Hospital had the highest rate of blood waste (35.3%) and Golestan the minimal loss (0.5%).

 Conclusions

 The 12% waste rate of blood and blood products in our study shows the necessity of training about blood ordering and cold chain during transportation with the participation of the hospitals with the low level of wastage, the establishment of efficient hospital committees, and counseling with professionals. Further study of blood wastage in hospitals with seemingly high discard rate of blood is recommended.