Years ago there was a maximum # of whole blood donations a donor could make /year. Does anyone know whether this still applies? The current edition of standards only states whole blood donation interval (Reference Standard 5.4.1A) is 8 weeks after whole blood donation.

Do you know what that Standard stated? Or possibly what edition of Standards? I have the disk with all versions so I could take a look and see.

We do not use a limit for the total number of wb donations per year, just the 8 week weight for wb, or 16 weeks for a double BC collection.

The regulation for maxmum # of donations per year was dropped a few years ago. The FDA requirement is for an 8 week interval between whole blood donations. If you do the math, a person can donate 7 times in a given calander year.

The old standard, and I could not tell you which one it was, was that a whole blood donor could donate every 6 weeks up to a mxiumum of 5 times a year. I can see that there is no current AABB standard nor can I find it in the CFR, so I will be revising this policy.

Thanks for your input

I found this in the 1963 4th Edition of aaBB Standards:

"Except for reasonable qualifying circumstances, the interval between individual donations should be at least 8 weeks."

I could not find a reference to the interval in the 1-3 edition of Standards. So it looks like aaBB has required the eight week interval for quite some time. I didn't find any aaBB references to maximum number of donations for WB.

The old standard, and I could not tell you which one it was, was that a whole blood donor could donate every 6 weeks up to a mxiumum of 5 times a year. I can see that there is no current AABB standard nor can I find it in the CFR, so I will be revising this policy.

Thanks for your input

correction, I meant every 8 weeks up to 5 X /year