Insight into "Calculated Risk": An Application to the Prioritization of Emerging Infectious Diseases for Blood Transfusion Safety.
Risk Anal
; 37(9): 1783-1795, 2017 Sep.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28229466
ABSTRACT
Increasing identification of transmissions of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) by blood transfusion raised the question which of these EIDs poses the highest risk to blood safety. For a number of the EIDs that are perceived to be a threat to blood safety, evidence on actual disease or transmission characteristics is lacking, which might render measures against such EIDs disputable. On the other hand, the fact that we call them "emerging" implies almost by definition that we are uncertain about at least some of their characteristics. So what is the relative importance of various disease and transmission characteristics, and how are these influenced by the degree of uncertainty associated with their actual values? We identified the likelihood of transmission by blood transfusion, the presence of an asymptomatic phase of infection, prevalence of infection, and the disease impact as the main characteristics of the perceived risk of disease transmission by blood transfusion. A group of experts in the field of infectious diseases and blood transfusion ranked sets of (hypothetical) diseases with varying degrees of uncertainty associated with their disease characteristics, and used probabilistic inversion to obtain probability distributions for the weight of each of these risk characteristics. These distribution weights can be used to rank both existing and newly emerging infectious diseases with (partially) known characteristics. Analyses show that in case there is a lack of data concerning disease characteristics, it is the uncertainty concerning the asymptomatic phase and the disease impact that are the most important drivers of the perceived risk. On the other hand, if disease characteristics are well established, it is the prevalence of infection and the transmissibility of the disease by blood transfusion that will drive the perceived risk. The risk prioritization model derived provides an easy to obtain and rational expert assessment of the relative importance of an (emerging) infectious disease, requiring only a limited amount of information. Such a model might be used to justify a rational and proportional response to an emerging infectious disease, especially in situations where little or no specific information is available.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Transfusão de Sangue
/
Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes
/
Segurança do Sangue
Tipo de estudo:
Etiology_studies
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Prevalence_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Risk Anal
Ano de publicação:
2017
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Holanda