THE PATTERN OF BLOOD TRANSFUSION RELATED EVENTS IN PEDIATRIC HEMATOLOGY/ONCOLOGY PATIENTS

Background: Blood transfusion is a life-saving intervention for patients with haematological disorders who require frequent transfusions. Understanding the transfusion reactions for different hematologic disorders can help improve patient management. Aim: To understand transfusion reactions reported from children with hemoglobinopathies, hematologic malignancies and bone marrow failure disorder. Methodology: This is a retrospective chart review on blood transfusion events in children with diagnosis of hemoglobinopathy, bone marrow failure and hematologic malignancies, whose data was obtained from at a tertiary care children’s hospital.Data collected include diagnosis, blood products transfused and any transfusion related events which were recorded in microsoft excel sheet. Data analysis was done using SPSS 22. . P value of less than 0.05 were considered as statistaically significant. Result: The blood product associated with frequent transfusion reactions were leukoreduced and irradiated red blood cells, which had 30/67 events (44.8%), followed by leukoreduced and irradiated platelet, which had 25/67 events (37.3). Allergic reaction was the most frequently reported transfusion reaction, followed by febrile non- hemolytic transfusion reaction for all three groups. Delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction was only reported in the hemoglobinopathy group. The hematologic malignancy group receieved a higher number of blood components compared to others. P=0.001 Conclusion: the incidence of transfusion reactions in our study was 0.47%. The hemato-oncology group receieved the most blood products compared to others. (p=0.001). While allergic reaction was the commonest TRAE amongst all disease categories, there was no statistically significant association between transfusion reaction and diagnosis.