Are blood transfusions between relatives safe?
It is thought that patients are safest to receive blood from relatives, but this is not the case. In some ways, the risk of complications from graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after a blood transfusion between relatives (e.g., parent and child) is much greater than the risk of transfusion between non-relatives. When the HLA haplotypes of donor and recipient blood are identical, the recipient, who has a defective or suppressed immune function due to disease or other reasons, lacks an anti-donor response and mistakes the donor’s blood for his or her own after transfusion and does not reject it. Therefore, the use of blood from a relative donor should be avoided in transfusion therapy. Blood donated by relatives can be transferred by the blood center.
Why are blood transfusions risky?
Since a certain percentage of blood recipients after transfusion, adverse reactions to transfusion can occur. An adverse reaction is a new symptom or sign that occurs in a recipient during or after a blood transfusion that cannot be explained by the original disease. It can be classified as immune reactions, non-immune reactions and transfusion infections. In recent years, the control of transfusion infectious diseases has been strengthened, but due to the current level of technology, early infectious diseases are difficult to detect because of the “window period” of virus infection. Before transfusion, the doctor should inform the patient of the risks of transfusion and ask the patient’s family to sign the “Consent Form for Blood Transfusion”.
How to cooperate with the doctor for blood transfusion?
Before transfusion, the doctor should decide which component blood or blood products to transfuse and the amount of blood to be transfused according to the patient’s condition; the patient should tell the doctor her medical history, such as whether she has been transfused before, what reaction she has had, what her blood type is, whether she is Rh negative or positive; for women with childbirth history, such as whether the child has severe jaundice or anemia within one week of birth (which may be due to fetal-mother immunity, the mother’s body produces antibodies against the child’s red blood cells). Blood group antibodies may be produced in the mother’s body against the child’s red blood cells, which can cause neonatal hemolytic disease in the infant), when the mother should be tested for antibodies other than ABO blood group before blood transfusion to ensure the safety of the mother. Advocate the transfusion of component blood or blood products, and establish a scientific and reasonable concept of what is lacking and safe and effective blood transfusion. Do not ask for a blood transfusion because you want to supplement your body. Prohibit the transfusion of “comfort blood” and “humane blood”.
Try not to transfuse fresh blood
1. Fresh blood has strong antigenic properties of various components, which may cause transfusion reactions.
2. There are a large number of surviving lymphocytes, which increases the risk of graft-versus-host disease.
3. Syphilis spirochetes can survive for 3 days at 4 degrees Celsius outside the body, so blood within 3 days may still be infectious to syphilis, but blood beyond 3 days is safe.
4. If the purpose of blood transfusion is to replenish platelets and granulocytes, the blood within 12 hours is considered fresh, but the platelets and granulocytes contained are impure and not dense, which cannot achieve the therapeutic effect. Therefore, transfusion of fresh blood is not recommended because it can cause less harm than good.
What are the benefits of component blood transfusion?
Component blood transfusion has the following benefits.
1, the disease needs to choose, what is lacking transfusion, to improve the therapeutic effect. For example: anemia transfusion of red blood cells, granulocyte deficiency transfusion of granulocytes, thrombocytopenia transfusion of platelet concentrate, burn patients transfusion of plasma, etc.
2.Reduce the adverse reactions of blood transfusion and improve the safety of blood transfusion. Because the input of unneeded blood components is not only wasteful, but also can cause adverse reactions to blood transfusion.
3.Easy to preserve and easy to use. Different blood components can be preserved in different ways. Long-term ones such as fresh frozen plasma and cold precipitate can be preserved for 1 year; short-term ones such as platelets can be preserved in 22C shock box for 3~5 days and be used at any time.
4.One blood for multiple uses, saving blood source. Blood comes from the selfless contribution of healthy people, is a valuable resource, will be divided into various components of a bag of blood can be sent to a variety of uses, treatment of multiple patients. For example, if a city donates 350,000 units of blood every year, the blood made into components is 700,000 to 1 million units.
5.Reducing blood transfusion infectious diseases. Since some disease-causing factors in blood are mostly hidden in products such as white blood cells, cold precipitation and coagulation factors, most transfusion patients do not need these components.
Modern transfusion therapy has generally entered the stage of using component transfusion, and whole blood is basically not used. The proportion of component transfusions is an important indicator of the modernization of transfusion therapy. At present, the proportion of component blood transfusion has reached more than 90% internationally, and the proportion of whole blood transfusion is less than 10%. Component transfusion has also been commonly used in China, and the component transfusion rate in Shanghai has reached over 97%.
What does “self transfusion” mean? What are the benefits?
Self-transfusion is the storage or collection of one’s own blood, which can be left for surgery or re-introduced into the body when needed. Since the body’s blood is constantly metabolizing, a small amount of blood will grow quickly in the body after it is taken, and there is usually some blood stored in the tissues and organs, so it will not affect health.
Self-transfusion is the safest and can prevent transfusion-related infectious diseases and immune transfusion adverse reactions; avoid the accident of transfusion of allogeneic blood; rare blood types or special patients (IgM deficiency, etc.) are more suitable for their own blood transfusion; moderate amount of multiple self-collection of blood can stimulate blood regeneration, so that post-operative patients can accelerate hematopoiesis; and can relieve blood supply tension; save costs, etc.
Type O blood type is a dangerous universal blood donor
The serum of type O blood contains natural anti-A and anti-B antibodies. When type O blood is imported into people with type A, B or AB blood, the anti-A and anti-B antibodies in type O blood will combine with the red blood cells of people with the above three blood types (because the red blood cell membranes of these people contain the corresponding A or B antigens), causing the red blood cells to be destroyed and resulting in hemolytic transfusion reactions.
During the Second World War, due to the shortage of blood in the war zone and the low level of transfusion science, O blood had to be used as the “universal blood” for rescue when there was a lack of homozygous blood, based on the fact that when a small amount of O blood was transfused, the natural anti-A and anti-B antibodies were diluted by the large amount of blood of the recipient and the possibility of destroying red blood cells was reduced. The reason. It has been shown that when the above three blood types are transfused with more O blood (especially with anti-A and anti-B potencies greater than 32), the recipient is prone to hemolytic transfusion reactions.
It has been found that some anti-A and anti-B antibodies in O blood are immune antibodies, and if this O blood is fed into a recipient with a different blood type, it is more likely to lead to hemolytic transfusion reactions, and can cause red blood cells to form spherical cells, increase the fragility of red blood cells, shorten the life span of red blood cells, and in severe cases, hemoglobinuria can occur. Therefore, O blood type is a dangerous universal blood donor.