West Bengal: Health department issues guidelines on platelet transfusion to curb misuse

Kolkata: With the reports of inadvertent use of platelet on some dengue patients, the state health department on Friday re-circulated the platelet transfusion guidelines to all government and private hospitals, asking them to adhere to the protocol. The health department has made it clear that platelet should be transfused only when its count dips below 10,000 even if the patient does not have any bleeding.

On Friday, an expert committee member set up by the state health department held a session for private hospital doctors on treatment and testing protocol for dengue and malaria patients. The committee on Thursday had held similar sessions for doctors across government hospitals.

“We are getting some reports of platelet being used on dengue patients irrationally and randomly. The re-circulation of the platelet transfusion guidelines is to streamline and rationalize once again the use of platelet across the state. The protocol is in sync with WHO and GOI guidelines,” said a senior health department official. “Transfusing platelet to a patient means transfusing a foreign particle, which has risk factors for adverse reactions called transfusion reactions and infections. Hence, platelet has to be used very cautiously,” said Prasun Bhattacharya, immunohematology and transfusion medicine head at Medical College Hospital Kolkata.

The guidelines also asked hospitals to cross check the blood group of the patients carefully before requisitioning platelet. Sources said dengue have the tendency to cause thrombocytopenia (dip in platelet) in patients. One of the guidelines says thrombocytopenia is transient and short lived and there is no need to give repeated platelet transfusion.

“Also inadvertent use can cause platelet crisis. Thus, sometimes the patients who really need this blood product are deprived of it,” said Abhijit Mandal, a senior official with the state blood transfusion council. Most hospitals across the city have 20 plus dengue patients undergoing treatment.