ABSTRACT
From the time of Hippocrates, the intention of doing no harm to one’s patient has been codified as a physician’s duty. Viral transmission through transfusion clearly represents an untoward outcome that both physician and patient would like to avoid, and both parties would certainly prefer to minimize the risks of a transfusion. Laudable and effective efforts have been directed at reducing transfusion risks through donor screening, infectious disease marker testing, and viral-inactivation efforts, but the risks of transfusion can only be lowered or replaced, not eliminated. In addition to an ongoing balancing of risks and benefits, the medical community is now also asked by society to achieve more with fewer resources. The desire to reduce transfusion risk must be accomplished in an era of finite resources. This situation is an appropriate one for application of decision analysis tools-not only to determine the relative return on investments in new approaches to this health care problem, but also to illustrate where blood safety efforts are most likely to yield substantial payoffs.
