Vollblutspende ohne Altersgrenze: was wie bisher gelernt haben
Michael Müller-Steinhardt (Baden-Baden / DE), Bettina Lizardo (Lütjensee / DE), Susanne Seyboth (Baden-Baden / DE), Patrick Wuchter (Mannheim / DE), Sixten Körper (Ulm / DE), Markus Müller (Frankfurt a. M. / DE), Torsten Tonn (Frankfurt a. M. / DE)
Due to a change of the German drug law in 2023, the general upper age limit for blood donation was abolished and deferral or exclusion from blood donation in blood donors from ≥ 73 years (WBD≥73y) must now always be based on an individual decision. In order to continuously ensure the safety of elderly blood donors, a thorough investigation (Eignungsuntersuchung=EU) every 5 years from 60 years onwards has been implemented in return.
Since the implementation in October 2023, a total of 591.842 whole blood donation (WBD) attempts either in fixed (68.023) or mobile (523.819) collection sites (FCS versus MCS) of the German Red Cross Blood Services Baden-Württemberg - Hessia (BWH) and Northeast (NE) have been analysed and the following parameters were determined focussing on WBD≥73y: number of donations, deferrals/exclusions, deferral rate, reasons for deferral, number of first time donors (FTD), number of local and systemic donor adverse events and number of EU in WBD≥60y.
340/68.023 collection attempts at FCS and 2.238/523.819 at MCS were from donors ≥ 73 years, while 271/60.228 WBD at FCS and 1.906/485.200 WBD at MCS were from that age group resulting in a deferral rate of 20%. The oldest successful donor was 89 yrs. of age! Most frequent reasons for deferral/exclusion were: 1. elevated blood pressure, 2. cardiovascular diseases, 3. endoscopy. The overall FTD-rate in WBD≥73y was 154/2.578 (6.0%). Of 72 adverse events observed in 2.177 WBD (3.3%) 3 were systemic hypotonic reactions (1 requiring further treatment), whereas 69 were local reactions. Among 591.842 collection attempts in total, 6.257 (1.06%) required an EU as they were from WBD≥60y.
Since the breaking up of the upper age limit, we collected 2.177 WBD from WBD≥73y equivalent to only 0.4% of all collected WBD. Even though the majority were former WBD, we observed a 6.0% FTD-rate among this cohort. The overall deferral rate of 20% is comparable to FTD and most common reasons were mainly due cardiovascular disease. As the 3.3%-rate of adverse events was not elevated, we conclude that WBD from WBD≥73y can be regarded safe. However, ongoing analysis is required to ensure that the safety of WBD≥73y can be warranted.
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