Safety incident reports associated with blood transfusions

Patient safety remains a critical issue in health care. Adverse events related to blood transfusion constitute a threat to patient safety. The aim of this study is to compare and contrast reporting trends of patient safety events that occur during the transfusion of blood components in pediatric and adult hospital care settings.

This is a multicenter analysis of reported patient safety incidents occurring during the administration of blood components for four children's and 21 adult hospitals from January 2010 through September 2017. Denominators were pediatric or adult transfusions per year for a subset of two pediatric and two adult hospitals able to provide denominators for the complete reporting period. Rates were calculated on the subset of four hospitals per 100,000 components transfused with Pearson's chi square for comparison (p < 0.05 as significant).

There were 1902 reports for an estimated 1.1 million transfusions: 358 reports from pediatric hospitals and 1544 reports from adult hospitals. From hospitals able to provide denominator data; there were 192 reports for 128,560 pediatric transfusions and 183 reports for 377,563 adult transfusions. The reporting rate per 100,000 components from these four hospitals was 149 for pediatric and 48 for adult reports (p < 0.01).

This analysis demonstrates the continued need for transfusion safety practices. The type of incident reports differed in the pediatric setting compared to the adult setting. Understanding patient safety event reporting trends related to blood transfusion will help target hemovigilance education and interventions to the appropriate patient populations.