The Control and Prevention of Transfusion Syphilis

The increase in the employment of blood transfusion in recent years is responsible for the growing interest in problems connected with adequate protection of the recipient against infection with the donor's blood. Today transfusions are administered much more frequently and in a greater number and variety of disease states than heretofore. For example, in response to inquiries in several New York hospitals we have been informed that the number of transfusions has doubled during the past three years. This is due partly to simplification of the technic, easier performance of the operation and increase in hospital facilities, and partly also to the added protection afforded the patient by a more careful selection of donors and the safeguards rendered by the more sensitive serologic tests for syphilis. NEED OF SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT TRANSFUSION SYPHILIS Fordyce1in 1915 reported Dade's case of transfusion syphilis, which is said to be the first