Packed red blood cell transfusion is not associated with increased risk of necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants

Objective:Recent reports have posited a temporal association between blood transfusion with packed red blood cells (BT) and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). We evaluated the relationship between BT and NEC among infants at three hospitals who were consented at birth into a prospective observational study of NEC.

Study design:We used a case-control design to match each case of NEC in our study population of infants born at<33 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA) to one control infant using hospital of birth, PMA, birth weight and date of birth.

Result:The number of transfusions per infant did not differ between 42 NEC cases and their controls (4.0±4.6 vs 5.4±4.1, mean±s.d., P=0.063). A matched-pair analysis did not identify an association of transfusion with NEC in either the 48-h or 7-day time periods before the onset of NEC. Stratifying on matched-sets, the Cox proportional hazard model did not identify any difference in the total number of BTs between the two groups (hazard ratio 0.78, 95% confidence interval 0.57 to 1.07, P=0.11).

Conclusion:In contrast to previous studies, our case-control study did not identify a significant temporal association between BT and NEC. Additional large prospective randomized studies are needed to clarify the relationship between BT and NEC.