Transfusion Medicine -Is Its Future Secure?

 Death by TRALI

Transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI), first reported in the early 1990's, is a life-threatening immune reaction following a blood transfusion.  It is now known that TRALI causes hundreds of deaths each year.  Experts, however, suspect that the numbers are much higher, as many health-care workers do not recognize the symptoms.  Although it is not quite clear what causes the reaction, according to the magazine New Scientist, the blood that causes it "appears to come primarily  from people who have been exposed to  a variety of blood groups in the past, such as . . . people who have had multiple transfusions." One report states that TRALI is now clear to the top of the list for causes of transfusion-related deaths in the United States and Britain, making it "a bigger problem for blood banks than high-profile diseases like HIV." 

Next time: Transfusion Medicine - Is Its Future Secure? - The Composition of Blood

From the jw.org publications