Blood discard rate in a blood center in Curitiba - Brazil. Ten years of study.

Introduction: Development of technologies to reduce transfusion risks of infectious diseases is a major characteristic of hemotherapy. Thus, each donation undergoes clinical and serological screening tests to ensure the donated blood do not offer risks to the receiver.

Objective: Evaluate the prevalence of positive serology in blood donations rejected by Hemobanco (Curitiba - PR) in the period ranging from January 2003 to December 2012.

Methodology: During the period studied, we observed the total number of donations and its division according to gender. We also analyzed the number of rejected donations due to seropositivity, considering the diseases investigated routinely in blood banks in Brazil, and the frequency of discards according to age groups.

Results: Within the period studied, 399,280 donations were performed. 62.0% donors were male. Comparing 2003 to 2012, we noticed a significant decrease of discards, from 10.2% to 5.0%, respectively. There was a reduction of seropositivity for HIV, HBsAg and anti-HBc and an increase for Chagas Disease, hepatitis C, syphilis and HTLV. The age group with the highest prevalence for discards changed: it used to be the 40-59 years old group in 2003, and became the 20-39 years old group in 2012.

Conclusion: There was an increase in the number of donations in Hemobanco and a decrease in total discards due to seropositive donations. Most donors were male. The most prevalent cause of discards only amongst seropositive donation discards is seropositivity for anti-HBc. There was a significant increase of donors aged between 20 and 39 years old.