2. A patient who was admitted to the intensive care unit for a major gastrointestinal bleed receives a red cell transfusion. One hour after the transfusion, he complains of severe dyspnea. Over the next 30 minutes he develops respiratory failure and fevers with a chest x-ray showing infiltrates. He is intubated, but over the next 24 hours he improves and is extubated in 48 hours. What reaction ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the frequency and type of Acute Transfusion Reactions (ATRs) occurring in inpatients, reported to the transfusion service at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. METHODS This was a three years and seven months (from January 2005 till July 2008) retrospective review of all the transfusion reactions that were reported to the transfusion service at Aga Khan Uni...

Bacterial sepsis has become the most frequent infectious complication of transfusion. Although Yersinia enterocolitica is a common enteropathogen usually causing relatively mild disease, it is nevertheless a prominent cause of life-threatening post-transfusion infection. To gain a better understanding of the clinical presentation and prognosis of this rare occurrence, we performed a systematic ...

Transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease (TA-GVHD) is a rare complication of cellular blood component transfusion that produces a graft-versus-host clinical picture with concomitant bone marrow aplasia. We report the case of 2 patients with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) who developed TA-GvHD. Both patients had been given nonirradiated erythrocyte suspension before the diagnosi...

Introduction Hemoglobin (Hb) level transfusion thresholds in patients with sepsis who develop anemia have long been a matter of debate. In a randomized controlled trial comparing thresholds of Hb ≤ 7 g/dL vs. ≤ 9 g/dL in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock, comparable outcomes including mortality were obtained [1], while in an observational study of those patients, higher Hb levels wer...

BACKGROUND Transfusion services rely on transfusion reaction reporting to provide patient care and protect the blood supply. Unnecessary discontinuation of blood is a major wastage of scarce blood, as well as man, hours and funds. The aim of the present study was to describe the main characteristics of acute transfusion reactions reported in the 4 hospital of Kermanshah University of Medical Sc...

INTRODUCTION We sought to investigate whether treatment of subnormal (<70%) central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO2) with inotropes or red blood cell (RBC) transfusion during early goal-directed therapy (EGDT) for septic shock is independently associated with in-hospital mortality. METHODS Retrospective analysis of a prospective EGDT patient database drawn from 21 emergency departments with a...