Heart & Lung Disease In Donating Blood Video

If you have heart or lung disease, learn if you qualify for donating blood in this free video clip from a blood donation center.

About this Author

Barry Hooker has been working for the American Red Cross for 25 years. Currently, he is the director of recruitment for his region.

A lot of times heart and lung disease are issues that patients, or excuse me, that donors deal with are their situation may change from donation time to donation time. So, a lot of our questions do deal with, "How do you feel today?", for instance. "Have you had any change in your medical history since the last time we saw you? Have you had any heart related issues since we saw you last?". Obviously, the blood is pumped through the heart; if the heart's having issues, we don't want to reduce its ability to pass the blood through. So we don't take blood from people with heart or lung diseases, because we've got to make sure they're safe, they've got everything they need to fight the battles they're battling already with their heart and lung issues. So, we just do not take blood from heart and lung disease patients, or donors. If they get over their issues, and have been well for a year and the doctor signs off obviously on them donating again, we'll be happy to take them. But it's just a matter, again, donor safety is one of our top priorities. We've got to make sure our donors keep themselves safe, keep themselves with the ability to keep living, because we don't want to change that. We want them to be healthy when they leave, hopefully just like they were when they came in. So we try to stay very conscious of changes and effects that the blood donation has on the body, and one of the first effects it would have would probably be on the heart. If it's lost a unit of blood, it's got to work harder, work faster, to move everything along, so we don't want to take that unit of blood from somebody that may have the heart trouble.

Heart & Lung Disease in Donating Blood Video

About this Author