Transfusion Medicine -Is Its Future Secure?

Mistakes and Transfusion Reactions 

What are the greatest transfusion-related threats to patients in devel0ped countries?  Errors and immunologic reactions.  Regarding a 2001  Canadian study, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that thousands of blood transfusions involved near-misses because of "collecting blood samples from the wrong patient, mislabeling samples and requesting blood for the wrong patient." Such mistakes cost the lives of at least 441 people in the United States between 1995 and 2001.

Those who receive blood from another person face risks essentially similar to those undergoing an organ transplant.  Immune responses tend to reject foreign tissue.  In some cases, blood transfusions can actually prevent the activation of natural immune responses.  Such immunosuppression leaves the patient vulnerable to postoperative infections  and to viruses that had previously been inactive.  It is no wonder that Professor Ian M. Franklin, quoted at the outset of this article, encourages clinicians to "think once, twice, and three times before transfusing patients." 

Next time: Transfusion Medicine - Is Its Future Secure? -Experts Speak Out

From the jw.org publications