1999 Volume 6 Issue 1 Pages 53-57
We report a case of a female patient with a blood type of A1Bm who had been accidentally transfused with a large amount of group A blood during an emergency operation. This accident happened because the complete results of her blood typing test were not available in time to treat her critical oligemic condition because of the time (midnight) and since urgent crossmatching examination of group A blood was satisfacting. Though the patient developed episodes of hypovolemic shock and hemolytic reaction, she respond excellently to intensive care and recovered without serious sequelae. We believe that weak agglutination by the Bm antigen with anti-B serum helped avoid more serious sequealae from the incompatible blood transfusion. ABO weak variants are characterized by very weak antigen activity on the surface of red cells which react negatively to ordinary blood typing procedures. It has been thought that the type of blood used for transfusion with weak ABO variants does not necessarity have to be identical to that of the variants for satisfying crossmatching examination. However, we experienced a critical situation due to the limitations urgent crossmatching examinations and believe that transfusion of blood containing serum must be avoided in cases where a large amount of blood is transfused into a patient with ABO variants.
