International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | August 2018 | Vol 5 | Issue 8 Page 3596 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Sarkar TK et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2018 Aug;5(8):3596-3599 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article A cross sectional study on adequacy of blood transfusion and transfusion related infections in thalassemic patients attending a medical college hospital, West Bengal Tarun Kumar Sarkar 1 , Pulak Kumar Jana 1 , Jasmine M. 2 , Timiresh Kumar Das 3 , Mrinmoy Adhikary 1 , Vinoth Gnana Chellaiyan 4 *, Harsh Aggarwal 5 , Neha Taneja 6 INTRODUCTION Thalassemia is an autosomal recessive disorder, characterized by a group of disorders which is caused by inherited mutations that decreases the synthesis of either the α– globin or β– globin chains that comprises the adult hemoglobin (α 2 β 2 ) which leads to sequelae of conditions like anemia, tissue hypoxia, and red cell hemolysis. According to the type of hemoglobin affected, the symptoms varies. Mutations in α gene located on chromosome number 16 results in α thalassemia and in beta gene located on chromosome 11 results beta thalassemia. This leads to deficient production of respective chains and high number of abnormal hemoglobin. The severity depends upon the number of genes affected, out of four for alpha globin and two for beta globin genes. Unaffected chains are formed in normal quantities, since the complementary chains are deficient so normal chains are free and gets precipitated within the red cell causing red cell membrane damage ABSTRACT Background: Thalassemia is more prevalent in India. The main treatment of Thalassemia is blood transfusion. But the transfusion of blood has many side effects like iron overload, transfusion related infections etc. The objectives of the study were to assess the adequacy of blood transfusion for thalassemic patients and to determine the magnitude of transfusion transmitted infections among those patients. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital, West Bengal for 1 month with the sample size of 116. The blood samples from the patients were taken from the patients attending for blood transfusion in transfusion centre of Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital for two weeks dated from 24.04.2017 to 05.05.2017 to check for the hemoglobin, ferritin level and hepatitis B, C and HIV infection. Results: Among the 116 patients, even after transfusion, 94% of the study participants have their hemoglobin levels below 7 gm/dl. Only 2 individuals got their hemoglobin levels more than 9 gm/dl and only 1 patient got HIV infection post transfusion which accounts for 0.9% of study population. Conclusions: Frequent Hb estimation will help to maintain the adequacy of blood transfusion and proper screening of the blood before transfusion can help in reducing these transfusion transmitted infections. Keywords: Thalassemia, Ferritin level, Transfusion related infections Department of Community Medicine, 1 Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital, West Bengal, 2 Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Kelambakkam, Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu, 3 VMMC and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi, 4 Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Kelambakkam, Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu, India 5 MBBS, Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital, West Bengal, India 6 North Delhi Municipal Corporation Medical College and Hindu Rao hospital, New Delhi, India Received: 28 May 2018 Accepted: 04 July 2018 *Correspondence: Dr. Vinoth Gnana Chellaiyan, E-mail: drchellaiyan@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20183105