Blood Transfusion History

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The History of Blood Transfusion:Techniques and Discoveries that have Launched Transfusions into Modern Day Transfusion medicine began only 200 years ago and has been perfected in the last 50 years (Ness, & Schmidt, 2006). There are still new discoveries and new technologies being made in the field of blood transfusions. Blood transfusions today are used to treat blood loss, anemia, and other hemolytic diseases. Over 200 years ago blood was believed to have many different uses. During this time period, there was no knowledge of inter-species immunity problems, any anti-coagulant, or proper functioning equipment. Humans have always had a curiosity about blood and what exactly its purpose in the body. Blood was believed to have many mysterious …show more content…

He accidently discovered this while testing for diseases that caused red cell agglutination (Ness, & Schmidt, 2006). Today there are three different ways to detect the antibodies that determine blood type: blood grouping, reverse grouping, and cross-matching. Blood grouping uses antibodies to A, B, and D antigen to determine the blood type. Agglutination indicates a positive for that particular blood type. While reverse grouping uses anti-A and anti-B antibodies and agglutination means anti-A or anti-B are present in the serum. Cross-matching is where the donor’s red blood cells and the recipient’s red blood cells are mixed. If agglutination occurs they are deemed incompatible (Rittenhouse-Olson, & De Nardin, …show more content…

Before that, most blood donors were paid to donate. The transfusion-transmissible infections that are mostly tested for are the hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and syphilis. A study was conducted in China to see the percentage of donors that have a transfusion-transmissible infection and what classifications make a person more likely to have one of these infections. Some of the classifications are education, ethnicity, age, and number of donations. Donors were tested for hepatitis B antigen through a screening test before donating blood, and if they tested for hepatitis B, they were excluded from the study. The results concluded that there is a higher rate of transfusion-transmissible infections among first time donors, older donors, and donors other than the ethnicity Hans Chinese. Donors with a higher education were less likely to have a transfusion-transmissible infection (Zaller, Nelson, Ness, P., Wen, Kewir, Bai, & Shan,

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