hey guys,

can we accept such a donor who has performed heavy exercise just before the donation

please give reasons for each of ur answers

I don't think that there is any regulation that would stop you, but I would caution that you ensure that the donor's temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure have returned to normal levels. I would also suggest ensuring that the donor is pre-hydrated to reduce the risk of an adverse reaction.

Good points, Heather.

In actuality, if their vital signs were within your procedural normal limits, you would not necessarily even know about "heavy excercise" before donation. I do agree with the pre-hydration if the donor does let you know.

There seems to be good evidence that exercise before donation can raise the platelet count, now whether that's a good or bad thing i don't know.

We've had this question posed in the UK as to whether donors coming straight from a gym session can give blood, and the answer from our donor teams seems to be much as everyone else has said so far;

- Make sure they're rested (at least 30 minutes, preferably longer)

- Make sure they have had plenty to drink

- Make sure they have had something to eat

- Individual assessment at point of donation to make sure they feel OK

You might be interested in looking at this article in the latest Transfusion "Predonation hydration and applied muscle tension combine to reduce presyncopal reactions to blood donation" Volume50, Issue6,2010.

There seems to be a lot of work going on at the moment on this topic. Their conclusion was "Predonation hydration and a combination of hydration and leg exercise may help attenuate presyncopal reactions in relatively novice donors, although future studies with larger samples are required to confirm this effect." Heavy exercise isn't covered though

Cheers

Denise

thanx everyone youve all helped a lot

If you do ALT testing on your donor it may be elevated due to the exercise. Does anyone run ALTs anymore?

Good point David, but we stopped doing ALT testing in 2004...I would venture to guess that not many donor centers continued with the testing after it was no longer required.