Current status of bacterial contamination of autologous blood for transfusion

Bacteriological Safety of Blood Collected for Transfusion at University of Gondar Hospital Blood Bank, Northwest Ethiopia

“…The potential source of bacterial contamination of blood collected for transfusion is either bacteria in the donor's blood because of an underlying condition causing donor bacteremia or external contaminants introduced at the time of phlebotomy [9, 14, 15]. The source of bacterial contaminant of sampled blood units accounted by the donor bacteremia was only 4.76%.…”

“…Contaminated blood units may contain a numbers of virulent bacteria as well as endotoxins that are considered to be fatal to the recipient [12, 13]. The potential sources of bacterial contamination of blood collected for transfusion are skin flora introduced at the time of phlebotomy and from bacteria in the donor's blood because of an underlying condition causing donor bacteremia [9, 14, 15]. …”

Is cell salvage safe in liver resection? A pilot study

“…Coagulase-negative staphylococci and propionibacteria were the most frequent species found in small numbers. Ezzedine and co-workers [23] and Sugai and co-investigators [22] found skin and other environmental contaminants in 12.7% and 33% in their study groups, respectively. They did not observe any correlation between bacteriologic results of retransfused blood and infectious complications or laboratory findings indicative of bacteremia.…”

“…Tylman and co-workers investigated different blood-salvaging techniques and demonstrated that the CS5 reduces elevated concentrations of C3a and C5b-9 effectively, when using a washing volume of 1,000 mL per cycle [20]. Bacterial contamination of intraoperatively cell salvaged and processed blood is a known phenomenon [21][22][23]. Even if the technique is applied to so-called "sterile" operations only, the contamination found varied considerably: Kudo and co-workers [24] described an overall bacterial contamination of 39% in autologous RBC during craniotomies.…”

Perioperative Management of Pediatric Patients with Craniosynostosis

“…The most common microorganism isolated was coagulase-negative staphylococci. However, none of the patients who received the culture-positive autotransfusion blood showed clinical signs or laboratory findings of bacteremia [41]. Innenhofer and colleagues [42] found, in their pilot study with adolescent and adult patients, that polymorphonuclear leukocytes, which may induce endothelial damage and increase vascular permeability or coagulopathy, are neither impaired nor activated to the priming threshold, and concluded that the use of intraoperative blood salvage is safe.…”