Current Practice in FFP Preparation and Use in Greece: A National Survey

Fresh frozen plasma (FFP) transfusion is widely used in modern clinical settings. Practices regarding its use vary due to lack of guidelines from randomized trials. The aim of this study was to assess both the current practices regarding FFP production, use, and wastage and the implementation of quality control (QC), female donor plasma production policies, and use of pharmaceutical hemostatic agents in Greece.

The study was conducted during February-April 2018. For the first part of the study, data including FFP transfusion indication, hospital department, diagnosis, FFP units/transfusion episode, ABO compatibility, blood donor’s sex, and reasons for discarding were collected. For the second part, questionnaire data were analyzed.

According to data from 20 Greek hospitals, 12655 FFP units were transfused to 2700 patients during 5069 transfusion episodes in the studied period of time. Most patients were hospitalized in internal medicine, general surgery, and intensive care unit departments. Each patient received on average 4.69 units (2.5 units/episode). Transfusion requests were in accordance with international guidelines in 63.44% of cases and 99.04% of the units were given to ABO-identical patients. Main reasons for discarding included failure to meet quality requirements (30.06%), female donors (22.17%), and other causes (27.26%). Among 96.9% of all transfusion services across the country, 28.26% perform QC according to the directions of the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & Health Care and 68.83% discard plasma from female donors. Pharmaceutic hemostatic agents are used in 37.23% of the hospitals.

This is the first national survey regarding FFP production and transfusion in Greece. Staff of internal medicine, general surgery, and ICU departments, where most FFP-transfused patients are hospitalized, should be regularly involved in training on contemporary transfusion guidelines. Upcoming centralization of FFP production and inventory management could help in homogenizing practices regarding FFP use and improve product quality. Strengthening the use of pharmaceutic hemostatic agents could improve patients’ management.