Evolving policies for donors with diabetes: The Canadian experience

Background and objectives: Donor criteria for diabetes vary significantly. We describe our evolving policies for donors with diabetes, their contribution to the Canadian blood supply and their rate of syncopal reactions compared to other donors.

Materials and methods: All donors are asked if they have diabetes and have taken medications in the last 3 days. We assessed donors with diabetes on various medications, the number deferred over time, and syncopal reactions in donors with diabetes and other donors in our donor reaction database.

Results: Policy changes allowing type 2 diabetic donors on oral hypoglycaemics alone, type 2 diabetic donors on oral medications and insulin and type 1 diabetic donors (all on insulin) to donate resulted in a decrease in deferrals from 450 to 22 donors annually. Of donors being treated with medication for diabetes, 11% are receiving insulin as part of their treatment. Syncopal reaction rates were low and not statistically different between diabetic and non-diabetic donors, although confidence intervals (CIs) are large.

Conclusion: Policies decreased deferrals while maintaining safety. A longer observation period would strengthen these observations.