By Kim Rahn
A patient with blood type B was given A-type blood during a transfusion due to a mistake at a blood center and the hospital.
The patient didn’t suffer any major harm.
According to a Korean Red Cross report released Wednesday by Rep. You Jee-young of the ruling Saenuri Party, a hospital in northeastern Seoul gave two bags of A-type blood to the 54-year-old patient with blood type B, who was hospitalized for scrub typhus on Aug. 4.
The incident occurred as a staffer at a blood center affiliated with the Red Cross took out the wrong blood bags by mistake and medical staff and doctors at the hospital failed to check the blood type written on the bags.
The A-type blood bag contained only thrombocytes, so the patient didn’t suffer a hemolytic reaction, which occurs when red blood corpuscles of different blood types are mixed with each other. The reaction can cause anemia, jaundice, vomiting and difficulty in breathing.
“If it was whole blood or red blood corpuscles, the transfusion could have endangered the patient’s life,” You said.
According to the blood management policy, two blood center staffers should double-check the blood type in order to prevent such mistakes. But at that time of the incident, it was nighttime and there was only one person on duty.
“It is right to have two staffers at night. But we only had one to cut down on labor costs,” an official of the blood center said.
An official at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, “We’ll strengthen the guidelines to have both hospitals and blood centers check blood types when the blood bags are delivered.”