We just had one at our VA hospital.  It has created quite a stir because
they are so rare.  Yes, it's being investigated.  Best as we can tell he had
become sensitized from numerous transfusions over the last 6 months.
Appears as though it was matched ok.  This was one very ill person and his
surgery was sort of a last ditch effort to stop ongoing bleeding after every
other imaginable non-operative intervention failed.

And rec.ponds needs to know about this because...?????????? Please mind
which newsgroups you're posting too, thanks.

~ jan/WA
Zone 7a

Early in the 20th century, scientists deepened man's understanding of
the marvelous complexity of blood. They learned that there are
different blood types. Matching a donor's blood and a patient's
blood is critical in transfusions. If someone with type A blood
receives type B, he may have a severe hemolytic reaction. This can
destroy many of his red cells and quickly kill him. While blood-typing
and cross matching are now routine, errors do occur. Every year people
die of hemolytic reactions.

The facts show that the issue of incompatibility goes far beyond the
relatively few blood types that hospitals seek to match. Why? Well, in
his article "Blood Transfusion: Uses, Abuses, and Hazards,"
Dr. Douglas H. Posey, Jr., writes: "Nearly 30 years ago Sampson
described blood transfusion as a relatively dangerous procedure . . .
[Since then] at least 400 additional red cell antigens have been
identified and characterized. There is no doubt the number will
continue to increase because the red cell membrane is
enormously complex."-Journal of the National Medical Association,
July 1989.

Scientists are now studying the effect of transfused blood on the
body's defense, or immune, system. What might that mean for you or
for a relative who needs surgery?

When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the
recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it.
Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been
"properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a
conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical
papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic
responses."-"Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World
News, December 11, 1989.

A prime task of your immune system is detecting and destroying
malignant (cancer) cells. Could suppressed immunity lead to cancer and
death? Note two reports.

The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done
in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant
adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this
group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the
transfused and 74% for the nontransfused patients." Physicians at the
University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who
underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the
larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those
who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the
recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with
transfusions."-Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March
1989.

What do such studies suggest regarding transfusions? In his article
"Blood Transfusions and Surgery for Cancer," Dr. John S. Spratt
concluded: "The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless
surgeon."-The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986.

Another primary task of your immune system is to defend against
infection. So it is understandable that some studies show that patients
receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a
study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions,
25 percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who
received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were
associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or
postoperatively . . . The risk of postoperative infection increased
progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British
Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the
American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of
those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed
infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.

Dr. John A. Collins wrote concerning this effect of blood
transfusions: "It would be ironic indeed if a 'treatment' which
has very little evidence of accomplishing anything worthwhile should
subsequently be found to intensify one of the main problems faced by
such patients."-World Journal of Surgery, February 1987.