Blood safety & matching

Safe transfusion starts with carefully selected, regular, voluntary donors and blood that’s screened for infections (hepatitis B and C, HIV, syphilis and others). You should receive leucoreduced (white-cell-filtered) red cells, which prevents many reactions.

To avoid your body making antibodies against donor blood (“alloimmunisation”), your red-cell type is characterised before the first transfusion — at least for the C, c, D, E, e and Kell groups — and matched at each transfusion. A new-antibody screen and cross-match are done before every transfusion.

Keep a record of your blood group, any antibodies and reactions — it’s valuable if you’re ever transfused at a different centre.