[Risk of hepatitis from conventional pooled PPSB preparations]

The risk of hepatitis from prothrombin complex (pooled human clotting preparation) was retrospectively analysed. Of 39 patients who had undergone cardiac surgery, 22 (56%) developed hepatitis, while in those had not received pooled preparations the rate was only 5%. Although the proportion of multiple transfusions was significantly higher among the recipients of clotting preparations, it was found that the decisive hepatitis-inducing factor was the pooled preparation, not the transfusion blood. Contrary to earlier results, all cases were of the non-A, non-B type. The frequency of carriers of the causative virus is apparently not different from that with B virus. Thus both virus types must have occurred at similar frequency in earlier pooled clotting preparations. Since, furthermore, there seems to be no difference in their infectivity and their penetration in the population at large is likely to be similarly low, unrecognised double-infections in recipients of pooled clotting preparations were probably frequent before the introduction of recent methods of demonstrating hepatitis B.