The Impact of Prolonged Storage of Red Blood Cells on Cancer Survival

BACKGROUND: The duration of storage of transfused red blood cells (RBC) has been associated with poor clinical outcomes in some studies. We sought to establish whether prolonged storage of transfused RBC in cancer patients influences overall survival (OS) or cancer recurrence. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Patients diagnosed with cancer at The Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre between January 01, 2000 and December 31, 2005 were included (n = 27,591) where 1,929 (7.0%) received RBC transfusions within one year from diagnosis. Transfused RBC units were categorized as “new” if stored for less than 14 days, “intermediate” if stored between 14 and 28 days and “old” if stored for more than 28 days. Baseline characteristics between the comparative groups were compared by ANOVA test. Categorical variables and continuous variables were compared using Chi-squared and Wilcoxan rank-sum tests respectively. Overall survival was not associated with duration of storage of transfused RBC with a median survival of 1.2, 1.7, 1.1 years for only new, intermediate and old RBC units respectively (p = 0.36). Cancer recurrence was significantly higher in patients who received a RBC transfusion than those who did not (56.3% vs 33.0% respectively; p<0.0001) but was not affected by the duration of storage of transfused RBC (p = 0.06). In multivariate analysis, lung cancer, advanced stage, chemotherapy, radiation, cancer-related surgery and cancer recurrence were associated with inferior OS (p<0.05), while age, advanced stage, lung cancer, and more than 6 units of blood transfused were associated with cancer recurrence (p<0.05). The duration of storage of RBC before transfusion was not associated with OS or cancer recurrence in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: In patients diagnosed with cancer, the duration of storage of transfused RBC had no impact on OS or cancer recurrence. This suggests that our current RBC storage policy of providing RBC of variable duration of storage for patients with malignancy is safe.