Recommendations for Estimating the Need for Blood and Blood Components
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This document seeks to support the planning of activities by the blood programs and services in the Region of the Americas that supply blood to hospitals. Its contents are based on the premise that to perform their functions more efficiently and effectively, supply centers must project the future need for blood components at the hospital level and, thus program more precisely the achievement of their goals. An extensive review of the literature identified several approaches to estimating blood and blood component needs. For this document, the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), epidemiological studies conducted to project short- and medium-term blood needs, and specific proposals to use the number of patients admitted to hospitals as the reference value, were considered. |