Current risk of transfusion-associated human immunodeficiency virus infection

The procedures designed to minimize the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission through transfusion include donor self-exclusion, health history questions, confidential unit exclusion, donor call back to withdraw donation, and HIV antibody testing. Each step is important for reducing the number of units collected from donors who are at risk for HIV infection. Although HIV antibody test kit sensitivity exceeds 99%, recently infected persons who are in the "window" between infection and seroconversion are not detected. "Worst scenario" estimates indicate that 1 of 36,000 to 1 of 300,000 components may be collected from donors who have false-negative test results. Since some risk of infection transmission remains, physicians must prescribe transfusion therapy only when the benefit outweighs the potential risk.