Evaluation of non-invasive predonation hemoglobin screening in blood donors of Southeastern Serbia

Background: Pre-donation hemoglobin (Hb) screening is a mandatory test for selection of donors for blood donation. It is usually performed by invasive methods using capillary or venous blood. Today is also available non-invasive hemoglobinometry, which eliminates the need for needle-stick blood test. It is based on the principle of temporary blood-flow occlusion made by a pneumatic finger cuff which generates a strong optical signal, enabling highly sensitive measurement of blood Hb. The method is comfort for potentially blood donors, painless, simple to perform and without the risk of infection for both the donor and medical stuff. The goal of this study was to analyze the feasibility of non-invasive hemoglobinometry in our blood banks and to compare it with standard methods of Hb measurement using venous and capillary blood. Material and Methods: This prospective study was conducted on 494 randomly selected potential blood donors at Blood Transfusion Institute Nis and Blood Transfusion Department in Lekovac. Potential blood donors were stratified by sex, weight, number of previous donations, pulse and blood pressure. Predonation Hb values were determined on non-invasive NMB-200 device (Lmb Technologie GmbH) (NI-Hb) and compared with results obtained from HemoCue Hb201 (HemoCue, Sweden) for capillary Hb determination (HC-Hb) and Beckman Coulter automated cell counter for venous EDTA samples (BC-Hb). Data were analyzed and results were compared by using Means, Standard Deviations (SD), t-test and correlation. Results: The results obtained with NBM-200 (mean 14.66 ± 1.12 g/dl, range: 11.1-17.4 g/dl) didn't show statistical significance in comparison with HC-Hb (mean 14.76 ± 1.23 g/dl, range: 11.4-18.2 g/dl) and BC-Hb (mean 14.53 ± 1.09 g/dl, range: 10.9-17.8 g/dl), P < 0.05 for both comparisons among groups. The correlation between NI-Hb and HC-Hb was 0.87, the bias was 0.32 g/dl, the correlation between NI-Hb and BC-Hb was 0.78 and the bias was 0.39 g/dl. In 476 cases (96.36%) there were no differences in decision about donation, but in 18 potential blood donors there was a difference in final donor status. Fourteen blood donors (2.83%) were deffered by HC-Hb, but passed by NI-HB and BC-Hb, nine donors passed only BC-Hb (1.82%) and five donors (1.01%) passed only NI-Hb. Conclusion: Non-invasive hemoglobinometry has accuracy comparable to standard hemoglobin measurement methods and thus can be incorporated as routine predonation hemoglobin screening.