Health - Related Quality Of Life And Its Influencing Factors In Unpaid Blood Donors

Objective:Voluntary and unpaid blood donation can guarantee not only blood supply and quality, but also donors’ health and safe, which is the main source of clinic blood use. More studies show that scientific unpaid blood donation can promote donors’physical and mental health presently. Appropriate blood donation can strengthen immunity, anti-aging and reduce the risk of disease. In addition, it can positively affect psychological health as well. But there are short of comprehensive health assessment since most researches only study the effect of physical or mental health. Therefore, this study tries to investigate blood donors’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and exploring the effect by blood donation, through a large sample survey and repeat donors interview. Then apply the research conclusion to theoretically support related studies and publicize blood donation perspective from self-interest, change the publicizing way to underlines its commonweal and harmlessness, in order to recruit more regular donors.Methods:672 subjects were blood donors and accompanied non-blood donors recruited from Beijing Red Cross Blood Center or participanted in the network questionnaire survey. The survey included personal information (sex, age, education level, marital status, height, weight etc), behavioral lifestyle, blood donation (frequency, cognition, family support etc.) and HRQoL.The 36-item short term health survey (SF-36) used by HRQoL assessment can calculate the score on physical component summary (PCS) through physical functioning (PF), role-physical (RP), bodily pain (BP), general health (GH), and calculate the score on mental component summary (MCS) through vitality (VT), social functioning (SF), role emotional (RE), mental health (MH). Repeat donors (donation times>3) interview included their motivation, feeling, and health changes before and after donation. Bonferroni test was used to analyze the differences between different characteristic groups, and minimal clinically important difference (MCID) was set as 3. Compared the HRQoL in different donation frequency through ANOVA. Single-factor and multiple-factor analysis were used to explore the effect factors of donors’HRQoL(social demographic factors, behavior, blood donation cognition and family support were controlled). SAS9.3 was used for statistical analysis (P<0.05).Results:1. The HRQoL in different donation frequency (non,1-4,5-9,≥10). (1)PCS. In physical aspect, statistical significance (P<0.05) was found in different blood donation frequency. Compared to 1-4 blood donations, non-donors had lower scores than donors in physical component summary (PCS), general health (GH) (P<0.05), and the differences in physical functioning (PF), role physical (RP), bodily pain (BP) were larger than set MCID (3 points); The difference between 1-4 and more than 10 blood donations in the GH was larger than set MCID (3 points). (2)MCS. In the mental aspect, statistical significance (P<0.05) was also found in different blood donation frequency. Compared to 1-4 donations, statistical significance was found in non-donors’mental component summary (MCS) and mental health (MH) (P<0.05), and the differences in social functioning (SF) and role emotional (RE) were larger than set MCID (3 points). The statistical significance was found in MCS and vitality (VT) in 10 or more blood donations (P<0.05). (3) HRQoL in men and women. Analyze HRQoL of subjects with different frequency in men and women, and the result was simmiliar with the whole sample.2. The effect of blood donation on donors’HRQoL. (1) PCS. In Modell, donation frequency had strong protective effect on PCS((3’=0.212,P<0.001), PF(β’=0.086, P=0.027), RP(p’=0.113, P=0.003), BP(β’=0.166,P<0.001), GH(β’=0.230, P<0.001); In Model2, donation frequency was still positive to PCS(β’=0.219, P<0.001), PF(β’=0.152, P=0.001), RP(p’=0.153,P<0.001), BP(β’=0.119, P=0.005), GH(β’=0.204, P<0.001); In Model3, donation frequency can promote PCS(β’=0.165, P<0.001), PF(β’=0.127, P=0.005), RP(β’=0.124, P=0.007), BP(β’=0.095, P=0.033), GH(β’=0.130, P=0.002).Other factors had different effect on PCS. BMI, blood donation cognition had positive effect on PCS. Male, age, higher education level (bachelor or above) and special marital status were negative to PCS. (2) MCS. In Modell, donation frequency can promote MCS(β’=0.185, P<0.001), VT(β’=0.135, P<0.001), SF(β’=0.152,P<0001), RE(β’=0.090, P=0.019), MH(P’=0.187, P<0.001); In Model2, donation frequency can still improve MCS(β’=0.122, P=0.004), VT(β’=0.141,P<0001), SF(β’=0.133, P=0.008), MH(β’=0.128, P=0.002). In Model3, donation frequency only had positive effect on VT(β’=0.088, P=0.043). and the effect had reduced. Other factors had different effect on MCS. Age, exercise, BMI, blood donation cognition had positive effect on MCS. Higher education level (bachelor or above) and special marital status were negative to MCS.Conclusion:Donors’HRQoL was better than non-donors’. Donors with different donation frequency had different HRQoL. Donors’HRQoL would be promoted when they donote more often. The positive effect still existed after confounding factors were controlled. Meanwhile, some demographic factors, behavior and life-style, blood donation cognition had different effect on HRQoL. However, they can not change blood donation’s improvement on HRQoL Therefore, donors’ health may be improved through keep the positive factors and eliminate the negative factors. While, we still need a scientific study with a large sample size because of the small sample, distribution bias and research method problems.