Hepatitis B virus vaccination of blood donors what costs may be expected?

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Transfusion Medicine

Volume 15 Issue 2 Page 83 - April 2005

doi:10.1111/j.0958-7578.2005.00556.x

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Hepatitis B virus vaccination of blood donors what costs may be expected?

J. Ringwald*1, I. Mertz*, R. Zimmermann*, V. Weisbach*, E. Strasser*, S.

Achenbach*, S. Seyboth, E. Richter and R. Eckstein**Department of

Transfusion Medicine and Haemostaseology, Friedrich- Universität

Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, andRed Cross blood donation service

Baden-Württemberg-Hessen, Institute Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany

summary.

Although the risk of transfusion-transmitted hepatitis B virus (TT-HBV)

infection is very low, it still exists. Therefore, introduction of further

precautions to reduce this risk is discussed at present. However, so far no

data are available about the HBV vaccination status among blood donors

(BDs). We compared HBV vaccination status of apheresis donors (ADs) of a

university based and whole BDs (WBDs) of a Red Cross blood donation service

using a standardized questionnaire. On the basis of these data, the

estimated costs over 10 years for HBV vaccination were calculated for two

different strategies and compared with the costs for HBV nucleic acid

amplification technology (NAT) testing. 22·3% of the WBDs and 41·2% of the

ADs indicated having received at least one HBV vaccine dose. This difference

was related to the different demographic structures of the two BD

populations (BDPs). With regard to the primary costs for the blood donation

service, HBV vaccination of BDs could be an alternative to HBV NAT testing,

especially for BDPs with an already high HBV vaccination rate and a high

donation frequency.