Verification of the drug history given by potential blood donors: results of drug screening that combines hair and urine analysis

Abstract

The donor history is not adequate for identifying potential donors with risk factors. Deliberately false statements concerning risk factors are a clear breach of trust between the blood bank and potential donors. These unreliable donors represent an incalculable risk for the transfusion recipient. Therefore, it is appropriate to validate donor statements about drug consumption by random hair and urine analyses and to exclude from the donor pool all persons revealed as drug users.

Understanding noncompliance with selective donor deferral criteria for high‐risk behaviors in Australian blood donors

“…The majority focused on permanent deferral for male‐to‐male sex with a range of noncompliance of 0.8% to 2.3% among male donors . A few studies assessed other high‐risk nonsexual behaviors such as injecting drug use (IDU) . However, there is a paucity of data concerning noncompliance with high‐risk heterosexual deferrals (e.g., sex workers and their sexual contacts).…”

“…5 However, before this study no data were available for noncompliance among TTI test-negative donors. Internationally, studies conducted in Canada, 7,8 Germany, 9 the United Kingdom, 10 the United States, [11][12][13][14] and Hong Kong 15 have examined various aspects of risk nondisclosure during predonation assessment. The majority focused on permanent deferral for male-to-male sex with a range of noncompliance of 0.8% to 2.3% among male donors.…”

A Validation of Self-Reported Substance Use with Biochemical Testing Among Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department Seeking Treatment for Backache, Headache, and Toothache

“…Numerous studies on a variety of patient populations [e.g. substance abusers (Rutherford et al, 2000;Kilpatrick et al, 2000;Chermack et al, 2000;Preston et al, 1997;Ehrman et al, 1997), the homeless (Appel et al, 2001), research subjects (Struve et al, 2000;Ramey et al, 590 Schuckman et al 1998), psychiatric clinic patients (Calhoun et al, 2000), psychiatric ED patients (Dhossche and Rubinstein, 1996;Perrone et al, 2001), patients with sexually transmitted diseases (Hser et al, 1999), prisoners (Hser et al, 1999), and blood donors (Mahl et al, 2000)] have shown poor reporting accuracy when their self-reported drug use is compared to the results of a biochemical drug screen. Only one study compared self-report to results of biochemical drug screens in ED patients (Hser et al, 1999).…”

Legal issues of addiction assessment: the experience with hair testing in Greece

“…Despite these concerns expressed by the scientific community with respect to the role of hair drug-testing and the questions concerning scientific issues of hair testing that are still to be answered, hair testing has been applied in forensic investigations, historical research, autopsy, adoption and protective cases, exclusion of evidence, serial criminal cases, rape cases, doping control, as well as other scientific and/or legal cases (Tsatsakis, 1999;Baez et al, 2000;Clauwaert et al, 2000;Mahl et al, 2000;Ricossa et al, 2000;Kintz et al, 2001;Tsatsakis, 2001;Berti et al, 2003). The main use of hair analysis with respect to judicial applications lies within the frames of criminal and civil law.…”

“…The segmental analysis of human hair has been used as a helpful tool in forensic cases (Clauwaert et al, 2000;Mahl et al, 2000;Ricossa et al, 2000). Drug testing using sectional hair analysis provides valid evidence with respect to the occurrence and severity of illicit drug use (Tsatsakis, 1999).…”