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15.0 TRANSFUSION REACTION

The use of blood even under the best circumstances carries a high risk for the recipient.
HTAA, KUANTAN The commonest risk is transfusion reaction. Examples of these are :

a. Febrile reaction to pyrogens, leucocyte antibodies, platelet antibodies and
minor blood group antibodies.
b. Allergic reactions to plasma constituent.

For patient with repeated history of febrile reaction during transfusion, filtered
blood can be used to prevent similar reactions.

15.1 HAEMOVIGILANCE

Haemovigilance is a set of surveillance procedures covering the whole transfusion
chain ,from the donation of blood and its components to the follow-up of recipients of
transfusions intended to collect and assess information on unexpected or undesirable
effects resulting from the therapeutic use of labile blood products and to prevent the
occurrence or recurrence of such incidents.

The aim of haemovigilance is to increase awareness of the above mentioned situations
and thus raise the level of transfusion quality and safety by means of corrective and
preventive measures.

The haemovigilance system requires cooperation between all the different parties
involved: Blood Bank, the centre responsible for the donation and the blood donors, as
well as those responsible for the preparation, storage and supply of blood components
and the clinical services at the different hospitals where the transfusion will finally take
place.

This system is coordinated by theHaemovigilance coordinating centre at the National
Blood Centre. The functions of this coordinating centre are:

• To collect reports of all adverse events associated with blood transfusion which
includes transfusion reaction, donor reaction and other deviation from the
norm relating to supplies of reagent, equipment , blood bags, etc.
• Analyse the reports submitted.

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