I have donated blood before but it’s been at least a decade since I’ve done so. Recently I was at an event where the Bloodmobile was asking for donations. I went to donate and filed out the question sheet. One question I answered positive to was that I had a dura repair about ten years ago. During back surgery the surgeon nicked my dura and I needed a follow up surgery to repair it with a patch. Everything healed fine, but I was told this disqualified me from donating.
The person couldn’t tell me why and I asked my doctor and he said he had no idea why. He said that there shouldn’t be a restriction as far as he knows. So, anyone here have any idea why a dura repair would keep me from donating? I like to donate as I feel I’m doing something good. I’ve considered volunteering to be a bone marrow donor as well. I know it’s painful, but could really help someone. Well I be disqualified from this as well?
I’ve wondered something similar. I had a patch of muscle fascia removed from my thigh and sewn as a patch into my dura, and after that the blood donation people put me on the “banned for life” list.
I think it had to do with prion disease, but the donated material was from my own body, so I’ve wondered if it was just them being overly cautious.
How did they repair it? I see a line on the restrictions for Red Cross that specifically disqualify you from donating blood if you’ve had d dural transplant (since, from what I see on that site, dural transplants can be used in cases where Mad Cow disease is the diagnosis).
I don’t know how specific ‘dura matter transplant’ is. But if you didn’t get a transplant, you may be able to get a note from the surgeon and/or your medical records explaining that surgery was a repair and not a fix for an underlying medical problem. I’d also point out (if it’s true) that there was no ‘transplant’ or that the transplant is synthetic and not from another human/animal.
However, both the Red Cross AND wiki’s page on dura transplants both state that if you’ve had a dura transplant, you can’t donate blood (to red cross). So it might be over, but if it wasn’t a transplant (or it was synthetic) it might be worth getting the medical records and trying again.
It’s Mad Cow disease that they’re worried about, but like you said, I think they’re being overly cautions. I mean, you’re not going to catch MCD from yourself (right), they just see that line and you’re done.
Not being a medical person I’m unsure whether it applies in this specific instance but would-be donors who find themselves ineligible at my local Red Cross Centre are reminded that they can still donate plasma and a whole bunch of other blood stuff, which goes to the greater good.
Most blood centers use a standard set of questions used nationwide (or further). The people screening you don’t necessarily know the reasons for the questions or why they would exclude you.
Statistics for any kind of transplant or implant are kept and the possibility of contracting a communicable disease are correlated to those cases. Just one case of Mad Cow related to such a procedure is now enough to exclude donors on that basis until further research eliminates or confirms a problem, and that may take a long time. Simply for maintaining the statistic I have to fill out those forms on a regular basis even though they’ll throw my blood away (or sometimes use it for research) because of a condition with no definitive diagnosis.
ETA: and this kind of cautious approach is a good thing. A friend of mine dies as a result of contaminated blood when this level of screening was not used.
This FDA guide (PDF) to recommendations for deferral of people at risk for vCJD speaks in the text of rejecting a “recipient of dura mater allograft” (i.e. tissue from another person, as opposed to autograft, tissue from the patient’s own body). However, later in the same document their recommended screening questions, which I think are used verbatim by the Red Cross, only ask “Have you ever received a dura mater (brain covering) graft?” without distinguishing autograft from allograft. I haven’t been able to find why that is. Perhaps they don’t trust the potential donor to know whether his graft was an autograft or allograft.
There hasn’t been a case of MCD in at least a decade, maybe more. And I don’t think there was ever a case in the US. This is absurd. This morning’s Seattle paper carried an article that they are getting very short of blood.
The Red Cross (can’t speak for the rest of the blood collection places), do tend to be pretty slow to change WRT to things that were at one time or may have any chance of being a problem.
For example, you can’t donate if you’re a male and have had ‘sexual contact’ with another male, even once, since 1977. I understand, even now, the presence of AIDS is considerably higher in the gay population than the straight population, but ISTM they could let you bring in, for example, two clean STD tests, one recent, one at least 6 or 12 months previous and sign an affidavit (as I assume you already have to) that you haven’t had done this in the last X years. How many people are banned because they have had homosexual sex 30 years ago.
Similar rules could apply to ex-prostitutes or ex-injectable (illegal) drug users.
ISTM that it’s better to say ‘okay, you did [something] 20 years ago, but you test clean and can prove it and you’re willing to sign something stating that you haven’t done it recently’, rather than people just plain lying about it. Considering that doing it this way would transfer any liability to the donator, rather than the red cross.
Keep in mind, if someone had male had sex with another male in 1998 or shot up heroin with a used needle 6 months ago, they could still say ‘no’. If the blood tests clean, no one will be the wiser. If you give them the opportunity to prove they’re clean, many will probably do it.
Call the Red Cross & talk to someone there. No offense to the people working at the blood mobile, but it’s their job to follow the rules given to them not to necessarily know why a policy is the way it is. In talking to the people at corporate, it may be possible to find out details & what can be done to remove you from the permanently barred list.
FYI, This was recently changed to a 1 year deferral (in both the USA and Canada). According to the Red Cross website, they are working on a procedure to allow people who have previously been banned by this rule to apply to be allowed to donate again.