Positivity of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C in patients enrolled in a confidential self-exclusion system of blood donation: a cross-sectional analytical study

context and objective: selection of healthy blood donors is essential to ensure blood safety. a confidential self-exclusion (cse) system was designed so that high-risk donors could confidentially exclude their blood from use in transfusions. this study aimed to compare the demographic characteristics and the results from human immunodeficiency virus (hiv), hepatitis b surface (hbs) and hepatitis c virus (hcv) screening tests on donors who opted to get into and out of cse. design and setting: analytical cross-sectional study on all volunteer donors at shiraz blood transfusion organization from march 21, 2006, to march 21, 2008. methods: the results from the abovementioned tests were compared between donors who opted into and out of cse. results: 100,148 donors in 2006 and 104,271 in 2007 gave blood. among these donors, respectively, 829 (0.82%) and 592 (0.57%) opted for the cse. the prevalence of hiv antibodies, hbs antigens and hcv antibodies in cse donors was significantly higher than in donors who did not choose cse (p < 0.05). the prevalence of at least one of these three infections among cse donors was 3.12% in 2006 and 3.04% in 2007, and was significantly higher than the prevalence among non-cse donors (0.58% and 0.57%, respectively). conclusion: because of the higher prevalence of hbs, hcv and hiv positivity in blood donors who chose the cse option, offering cse to blood donors could be a potentially useful method for improving blood safety, since it could increase the detection of infected blood during the window period.