Evaluation of Haemogram Parameters in Refrigerated Therapeutic Whole Blood at the Blood Transfusion Center of the Douala General Hospital Cameroon

Blood transfusion is a substitute therapy which consists to administered blood or one of its components to one or more sick person. hematological components retain their stability if the cold chain is maintained between 2 and 6°C. essential for good transfusion performance. The aim of this work was to evaluate the stability of haemogram parameters under the influence of cold chain on whole blood bags seronegative from infections transmissible by blood transfusion (ITT).

Methodology: A cohort of 200 blood collected into the citrate phosphate dextrose adenine (CPDA) blood bag collected consecutively at the blood transfusion center of the Douala General Hospital constituted the population of the study conducted from March 1st to September 30th, 2018. 5ml of this blood from the donor’s blood bag was collected into a dry tube (for the blood count using URIT 3000 Plus machine) and the rest was stored in a BIOBASE brand refrigerator at a temperature between 2 and 6. On the day of delivery, a second sample was taken by section of the tubing of the bag for the analysis of a second haemogram of the same blood bags. Temperature, refrigerator opening frequency and blood were collected every day. Data analysis was done using by SPSS 20.0 for Windows software. The results were considered significant at p˂0.05.

Results: The storage temperature significantly (p˂0.05) decrease the rate of leukocytes, erythrocytes and hemoglobin. When the shelf life and the frequency of opening the refrigerator increased, hemoglobin, hematocrit, MCV and lymphocyte decreased significantly while leukocyte, MCHC, thrombocytes and granulocytes increase significantly.

Conclusion: This study showed that, the decrease in leukocytes, red blood cells and hemoglobin levels was significantly related to shelf life and frequency of opening the refrigerator. Knowledge on this variation could be very useful in the selection of refrigerated blood or pint and the efficiency of transfusion.