Apparently the ISBT have added this to their list: https://www.isbtweb.org/isbt-working-parties/rcibgt.html (the page still says 47 but the data tables have it added)
Blood for transfusion needs to be crossmatched against antigen types of the recipient. Many patients will tolerate several transfusions of a minor mismatched antigen before developing a sensitivity. Major antigens are what cause significant reactions that can be life-threatening.
Minor antigens come into play when crossmatching for infants and premies, but this is way beyond my scope.
Depending on the severity of the reaction, blood will either be stopped or the patient will be loaded up with Benadryl and Tylenol with the blood running at a slower rate.
I’m reminded of that American high schooler in Uganda running an orphanage and ran into this exact issue when doing a transfusion on a malnourished infant. [1]
She was skilled enough to perform a transfusion and knowledgeable enough to test for a ABO+/- match but not so knowledgeable as to be sensitive to this issue with disastrous results.
On the other hand her clinics metrics were on par or slightly above the local hospitals so it’s not clear to me they would have faired better getting care elsewhere there.
[1] https://stories.showmax.com/za/hbos-docuseries-savior-comple...
We don't actually express antibodies to antigens until we're exposed to them, so crossmatching won't detect a minor antigen mismatch until the first transfusion containing the antigen is administered.
That first time causes a delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction, which is generally milder than the kind of reaction crossmatching will prevent, but can be serious or even fatal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_hemolytic_transfusion_...
Don't we have synthetic blood, at least capable of transporting oxygen ?
There are effectively millions of types because all the systems combined combinatorially, but most antigens beyond ABO and Rh don't cause that much of an issue, so in emergency cases, they just go with them.
> It's complicated.
> There are more than 35 red blood cell groups (see https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/blood-typ... for a nice writeup). For each of those blood groups, there is more than one possible configuration of some protein or carbohydrate (something like more than one possible genetic sequence leading to more than one kind of molecule on the surface of the RBCs).
> And, even with ABO, there can be infrequent variations that make things more complicated (see https://professionaleducation.blood.ca/en/transfusion/best-p... for more).
> For the other blood groups, I think every case the groups were identified because a patient somewhere made an antibody, causing either a transfusion reaction (if not tested ahead of time) or, more likely, a positive (incompatible) reaction on in compatibility testing.
> [...]
It's worth reading the full original comment because it has more interesting details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507052
Which makes the hollywood trope of ‘i’m a universal donor’ really silly. Universal donor of what? And then they pump the blood and plasma straight into the other person pretty much guaranteeing problems since either the blood or plasma will be incompatible. The only reason blood donation works is due to machines that separate the blood and plasma.
How does that work? Were all three siblings regularly receiving donated blood? The article doesn't expand on this at all.
If American, think higher costs of care. If involved in car accident or other traumatic injury outside of normal area, good luck getting your blood transfused. Might get lucky with substitute. Surgery preparation also more complicated.
Maybe you have competent medical staff that recognize it. Maybe a few hematologists in the world familiar with your blood and history. Maybe a few neurons fire off in the back of an aging emergency physician that recalls this in a case study he/she read about in medical school/residency.
PS: I prefer pre debunked random universal mysticism to pseudo scientific racism. Some nonsense is the more preferable nonsense.
There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others. Even if the principle of what you/people believe goes against what you find scientifically relevent, or factual, or sensible. There still is something to be said about a group of people following a strange set of rules that could be demonstrably better than other sets of rules and beliefs. May it be enviromental, genetic, placebo or a tiny edge over what gives life meaning. We ended up with the gods we have today, not by coincidence, but because all the other ones failed their followers.
I don’t think that’s valid. Gods usually come with a set of values or a specific worldview, and these are inherently subjective. You can’t really rank them as "better" or "worse" in any meaningful way.
Let’s take an example: imagine I believe in a paperclip-god. The core value here is producing as many paperclips as possible, and I’d argue that anything that doesn’t serve this goal is inferior. Under this belief system, it might be okay to enslave or even kill humans if it leads to more paperclips. I could use logic and even scientific reasoning to defend this idea as a "better" system for maximizing paperclip production.
Now, you might object and say that humans are more valuable than paperclips, but we'll never agree. The value of the goal itself, whether it’s maximizing paperclips or valuing human life, is subjective. There’s no objective reason why one goal is inherently superior to the other.
This is actually what most christians believe (see Abraham's sacrifice). God is the ultimate source of morality, so if God wants you to kill your son - it's the morally good thing to do.
Which shows nicely that morality does not, in fact, come from God or Bible (if it did - we wouldn't care about Isaac - we'd consider it good that he'll get killed by his father). Instead we can't help but feel it's wrong to kill your son.
It's the conflict of the actual "natural law" vs the artificial religious "natural law" nicely wrapped up in one short story.
Even if you measure "better" as "more viral" - it's not "gods" who are better - it's cultural memes (for example there's 1000 versions of christianity believing in the same gods with vastly different cultures and virality outcomes).
Its true that many things co-evolved with us, like viruses and blood types(yes, we're somewhat on topic again) and even though we share many similar characteristics, like blood type, mayor, minor. Its also true that discovery of new things doesn't always invalidate the old way of thinking. Usuallyit just adds to what has already been existing. Like how multicellular life is a true breeding ground for single celled organism.
Similarly, the ABO+- blood type system was good enough to not kill patients, which is quite the improvement. Though only a fool would treat that system as gospel and align personalities with it. Now we're classifying the minor types and we're getting closer to rediscovering the uniqueness of everyones blood just as everyones beliefs,god or no god, is unique if you are willing to look.
I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god. I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are. I definitely wouldn't want our economy to become a paperclip maximiser but any perceived missteps should be dissected with a good blogpost on how we got here in the first place.
> I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are
I am not sure what the relation is between these sentences.
Well if that's not a typical young Korean, then who is?
So our ABO+/- system already doesn't have information on the other 45+ systems, and this new antigen wouldn't change that high level classification.