Current Thoughts on Blood Transfusion Reactions

Transfusion therapy, under current concepts of medical care, is based upon the ready availability of blood and blood components that can be administered without risk to the patient. The complex and interdependent series of procedures for pre-transfusion testing of blood evolved during the past two decades has demanded critical decisions of the pathologist and blood bank technologist. Although many gaps in our knowledge remain, human error continues to be the major cause of untoward reactions to blood transfusion. Furthermore, human error is more often the result of clerical rather than technical mistakes. The selection of a specific unit of blood for a given patient is a decision whose finality has no counterpart in rountine practice. There simply is no way to recover the wrong unit of blood once it has been infused into a recipient. (Author)