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Researchers to Study Blood Transfusion Risk in the U.K.

Blood bag (NIH)

(National Institutes of Health)

Researchers in the U.K. will examine the risks and benefits of receiving blood or blood products, including the need for patients to give informed consent before receiving blood. The study will be a collaboration between Helen Busby at the University of Leicester, Julie Kent at University of the West of England in Bristol, and Anne-Maree Farrell at the University of Manchester, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

The project will look at the ways people think about risk and safety in blood services in the U.K. and aims to provide an analysis of public understandings, professional practice, public policy, and law in relation to risks in the supply of blood products. The research is expected to involve the views of patients, professionals, and regulators about risk when thinking about treatments with blood products.

Busby notes that receiving blood has become progressively safer and the risks of adverse events occuring from a blood transfusion are small. Nonetheless regulation of the blood supply is an international and national activity aimed at protecting public health.

“In keeping with contemporary policies that emphasize patient involvement in health services,” says Busby, “there is now an expectation that there will be more information for all interested in their treatment. This extends to the risks and benefits of receiving blood.”

She adds that a national discussion in the U.K. about patients being asked to give their informed consent to receiving blood or blood products, as required for many other medical interventions.  “This research project is therefore both timely and is expected to inform policy debate,” says Busby.

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1 comment to Researchers to Study Blood Transfusion Risk in the U.K.

  • Nick

    “The current literature pertaining to associated morbidity and mortality with homologous blood transfusion in the surgical patient seems to be pointing only in one direction, which is we must start reducing our patients exposure to homologous blood and products. There appears to be ever mounting evidence of increases in infraction, stroke, transfusion related lung injury, infection, and death that authors are associating with transfusion.”
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21449243