to expect that we should all be entitled to safe blood products in hospital

[Beaaware]

About 2 years ago I discovered that our blood supplies were not screened for the human form of mad cow disease (vCJD). A close relative of mine was given a blood transfusion without any knowledge of vCJD and may now go onto develop the human form of mad cows disease, they are devastated that they were not given any advice by the medical team that cared for them. Am I being unreasonable to think that we should be told what we are being exposed to when we are given blood products that could be contaminated with deadly vCJD prions from unscreened blood donors and that we are unable to ever donate blood or organs because of this?

beaware

So you think that a study involving 60 patients is adequately statistically powered to provide a result that is generalisable? You have just highlighted why the public are not allowed to read research and then choose how to spend public money. How many of those 60 pts would have been likely to have been given infected blood? And you say that blood has to be filtered for 30 mins? If someone is having a huge variceal bleed then I haven't got time to be faffing about waiting for a filter - they may be dead by then.

For this P-Capt filter to be adopted there needs to be good quality peer reviewed evidence that it is cost effective. A small trial with 60 pts does not fit this criteria.

The idea of the filter (from the manufacturer's POV) is that the blood is filtered at the point of collection, so the extra 30 minutes added on there, I believe.

YABU

If it's filtered at the point of collection then that's fine.

How much are they?

I've seen a suggestion that they would increase the cost of getting and processing a unit of blood from £50 to £100, but (a) I guess this may include factoring in extra time, training, higher loss rate when the filter goes wrong, etc. and (b) it was in the Daily Mail so I'm not inclined to put a huge amount of weight behind it. Manufacturers did say (IIRC) something to the effect of "ooooh no, it shouldn't be that much" but were also tight-lipped about what they thought cost impact should be.

Was there not a suggestion in one study that the filters may be subject to failure?
There was also questions raised as to the prothrombin levels and haemolysis of the blood, this would lead to a greater number of units being given to the patient therefore requiring a larger number of donations?

BTW a lot of the info on the studies has been published in USA
and there is out there online