[The need for thorough infection screening in donors of autologous blood]

To avoid the risk of diseases transmitted by homologous blood, predeposited autologous blood is useful for elective surgical patients. World-wide, there is disagreement over whether complete donor testing should or should not be done on autologous collections. There are a variety of testing concerns which have evolved into reasons for testing all autologous units for the presence of infections disease markers. One of the reasons is the risk of giving the wrong (untested) blood to the wrong patient and transmitting HIV (and thus AIDS) or viral hepatitis. Another stated concern is the risk of creating additional problems in the laboratory by treating some units differently than other units. The argument continues that without this testing, blood bank and hospital personnel may be unnecessarily exposed to blood that has the potential to cause illness. Another justification for testing is given when the blood bank participates in crossover (transfusing blood to recipients other than the autologous donor/patient).