The impact of the new tick-box questionnaire, and the personal donor interview, on donor deferrals in the East of Scotland.

The impact of a new tick-box questionnaire (TBQ) and personal donor interview (PDI) on donor and recipient safety was assessed over an 18-month and a 13-month period, respectively, by prospectively studying individual donors prior to and after the introduction of the new methodology. A 'hit' was defined as an instance where the TBQ or PDI prompted a donor to divulge information which they would not otherwise have divulged, with the new information having an impact on donor eligibility. There was a 'hit' rate of 0.19% for TBQ and 0.65% for PDI. Of these donors, 33% in the TBQ category and 14% of PDIs were reinstated, 24% and 32%, respectively, were deferred because of a malaria/chagas risk, and 16% of the 'hits' related to donor safety issues. When assessing recipient safety, particularly risk of a window period viral transmission, PDI is very significantly superior at identifying such donors (14 times better). Such information establishes the important safety aspects of these interventions and requires that further work be done to see whether PDIs, in particular, may be better targeted to specific groups of donors.