Grant: Project Grant

Infections acquired during a hospital stay are an important health problem. This is especially true for severely ill patients admitted to intensive care units, who are at a higher risk of dying or suffering serious morbidity from such infections. It is thought that blood transfusions could increase the risk for hospital-acquired infections. From the accumulating evidence, this might be especially true if the blood transfused is fresh, i.e., had been recently donated, because fresh blood has a higher number of live and functional cells that modulate our capacity to fight infections. These cells can interact with other cells of the recipient of the transfusion and lead to the suppression of his/her immunologic defenses, thereby increasing the risk for hospital-acquired infections. However, this hypothesis still needs to be proved. To do so, we will pool high-quality trial data that investigated the effect of age of transfused blood on severely ill patients to determine if the transfusion of fresh blood actually leads to more hospital-acquired infections. We have assembled a team of experts in blood transfusions, infection control, and clinical epidemiology to ensure the success of this study. Answering this question is essential because, if we show that transfusion of fresh blood leads to more hospital-acquired infections, Canadian Blood Services plans to develop new transfusion policies to prevent the transfusion of freshly donated blood to severely ill patients. This will lead to a decrease in these patients' risk of acquiring infections during their hospital stay, improve their chances of survival, and significantly reduce costs for our healthcare system.