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Donald R. Avoy, MD
Sunnyvale, Calif

JAMA. 1987;258(10):1331.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In his editorial entitled "Autologous and Aged Blood Donors,"¹ Greenwalt quotes Perkins² as saying that the probability of a person needing a transfusion during the permissible storage period "has got to be very low." No data are provided.

By using existing census data³ and information about transfusion trends from the study of Friedman et al,⁴ a more quantitative estimation of probability may be attempted. The logic is as follows:

1. Approximately 4 million patients undergo transfusion in this country each year. Based on a total population of 236 million, the raw probability would be 1.66% that any individual would receive a transfusion in any year, or about one person in 60.
   
2. Transfusions are not linearly distributed throughout the population. Persons younger than age 20 years represent 29.8% of the population and only 7.1% of the population receiving transfusions. Only 0.4% of this
   

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