Outline the potential adverse consequences of blood transfusion.
As only an outline was asked for, a brief statement about each complication was sufficient. Better
answers were structured using a classification of: Acute Immunological, Acute Non Immunological, Delayed Immunological and Delayed Non-immunological. Examples of expected detail would include the following:
E.g. Bacterial infection – a statement outlining the incidence of bacterial infection, a common causative organism or why bacterial infections are more commonly associated with platelet transfusions than red cells would have scored the marks allocated to ‘bacterial infection’.
E.g. Acute Haemolytic Transfusion Reaction – a statement about red cells being destroyed due to incompatibility of antigen on transfused cells with antibody of the recipient and an approximate incidence scored the marks allocated to AHTR.
An excellent resource is the Australian Red Cross transfusion website as listed in the suggested reading section of the syllabus.
Following the advice of the examiners, the following list of complications was cobbled together from the Australian Red Cross "Adverse events overview" page
Acute immunological complications
Acute non-immunological complications
Delayed immunological complications
Delayed non-immunological complications
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Beauregard, Patrice, and Morris A. Blajchman. "Hemolytic and pseudo-hemolytic transfusion reactions: an overview of the hemolytic transfusion reactions and the clinical conditions that mimic them." Transfusion medicine reviews 8.3 (1994): 184-199.
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