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Health care workers, including blood collection staff, are increasingly concerned about occupational hazards, particularly infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis B virus. For individuals involved with volunteer blood donors, the most frequent route of parenteral exposure is needlestick injury with the phlebotomy needle. To assess the level of risk and possible avenues for prevention, 117 needlestick injury reports involving 72 employees were reviewed over a 2-year period (March 1983-March 1985) at a large blood center. Some 708,824 units of blood were collected over this period by more than 200 collection staff members. The incidence of needlestick injury for the study period was 0.0165 percent (1 in approximately 6000 collections). The activities most frequently associated with injury were the filling of the pilot tubes, removal of the needle from the pilot tubes, and performance of the hemoglobin fingerstick. As needlestick is a rare event and as the prevalence of infection is low among volunteer donors, the risk of acquiring HIV or hepatitis B is extremely small among blood collection staff. This information should serve to reassure employees who perform venipuncture.
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