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Discussion

ER

In emergency situation, is it safe for a patient to have blood transfusion with the patient's relative claims that the patient's blood type is O+ without any ABO typing?

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    • Expert

    What are your thoughts?

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    • Expert

    In what context is this occurring?

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    • Admin

    And what type of blood is being transfused in this emergency situation?

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    Is this a serious question? Honestly I think the OP is trolling. We transfuse all the time w/o ABO typing. Welcome to level 1 trauma. It's called O-negative.

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    Uh no. Would never take a family member's word for it. If it's a trauma/emergency then the patient gets good ole O neg blood, without a crossmatch of course. If it's not emergent but we still have to give blood, we wait for the ABO/crossmatch and then transfuse. We blood band and then it's good for 48 hours, at 49 hours we start all over again.

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    • Moderator

    We use O neg for women of childbearing age and children, and O pos for adult males. I helped with our supplies in Afghanistan and we had a lot more O pos than O neg! Even in a remote location over there we did blood typing in case we needed to do whole blood, and also for giving fresh frozen plasma. Though all soldiers have their blood type on their dog tags, we still check via testing because about 15% of dog tags are actually wrong! In the US, we aren't going to do too many units of emergency uncrossmatched blood before moving to type-specific.

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    If the situation is an emergency and there is no time for typing wouldn't you proceed to just use O- until blood type is available? I'm new but this is what we were told...

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    • Expert
    In emergency situation, is it safe for a patient to have blood transfusion with the patient's relative claims that the patient's blood type is O+ without any ABO typing?

    Depends.

    If you give type O- blood, things should be fine.

    If you give the patient any other type except type O- blood, it can potentially be unsafe:

    ABO incompatibility: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

    As you can see, one of the potential complications is death. Among other things.

    O+ would NOT be OK to give as you don't know for certain the patient is O+. All you have is the family's word, which is worth the paper it's written on. They may be correct, or they may be wrong. You can't take that chance.

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    Is this a serious question? Honestly I think the OP is trolling. We transfuse all the time w/o ABO typing. Welcome to level 1 trauma. It's called O-negative.

    I think maybe you misunderstood the question, if a family member stated that a patient is O positive for instance, would we consider that reliable enough to transfuse O positive blood, which we don't since O positive isn't universal, we would still transfuse O negative in an emergent situation. In non-emergent situations we still crossmatch even if we're absolutely sure of the patient's blood type since there may also be antibodies that aren't compatible with the recipient's blood.

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    I think maybe you misunderstood the question, if a family member stated that a patient is O positive for instance, would we consider that reliable enough to transfuse O positive blood, which we don't since O positive isn't universal, we would still transfuse O negative in an emergent situation. In non-emergent situations we still crossmatch even if we're absolutely sure of the patient's blood type since there may also be antibodies that aren't compatible with the recipient's blood.

    Youre not a nurse, are you? It's obvious. I'm O positive. Do you think they would skip the step of typing and screening if I tell them that?

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    Youre not a nurse, are you? It's obvious. I'm O positive. Do you think they would skip the step of typing and screening if I tell them that?

    I don't think we would skip that step, which I was I said "In non-emergent situations we still crossmatch even if we're absolutely sure of the patient's blood type".

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    I don't think we would skip that step, which I was I said "In non-emergent situations we still crossmatch even if we're absolutely sure of the patient's blood type".

    You have a lot to learn yet. And you will learn these things in nursing school. In a trauma if the patient needs blood you begin infusing oh negative. Prior to that, however, you would have drawn blood it to type and screen. Once those results are in you than administer the same type of blood. Antibodies, etc.

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