A few days later
Nia is 19
A few days later
Nia is 19
Nia’s tests show a new problem. Her body attacked the red blood cells from the donor’s blood. She is ok, but now it will be harder to find blood for transfusions.
Chronic transfusion therapy can cause side effects and new health problems.
Your doctors will watch for these problems:
- Your body attacks the red blood cells from the donor (alloimmunization).
- You have too much iron in your body (iron overload).
- The donor’s red blood cells break down in your blood (hemolysis).
- Your blood gets thick and slow (hyperviscosity).
Alloimmunization is a common problem.
Your white blood cells (immune system cells) can attack red blood cells that come from a donor’s blood.
When this happens:
- Your body destroys the donor’s red blood cells.
- This means the transfusion may not work.
- You will not be able to get more transfusions from the same donor or with the same red blood cell type (blood group or phenotype), because your immune system has developed antibodies to it. A different blood type and donor will need to be found for your transfusions. The “type” describes what markers (antigens) there are on the surface of red blood cells.
- After this happens a number of times, it can be more difficult to find blood for transfusions.
Iron overload is a common problem with simple transfusions.
It means you have too much iron in your body.
When this happens:
- This is called iron overload.
- With exchange transfusions, it is not as common.
- It happens because red blood cells contain iron. Blood transfusions put more iron into your blood than normal. Sometimes, too much iron stays in your body.
- It can damage your heart, liver, pancreas, and other organs.
- If you have iron overload, you may need medicine that removes iron from the body. It is called chelation therapy.
Deferoxamine (Desferal) is a medicine given as an injection (shot).
It can cause side effects:
- The spot on the skin where the injection (shot) was given to you can have pain, swelling, burning, redness, irritation, or a hard lump.
- You can have blurry vision.
- You can feel dizzy.
- See more side effects.
Deferiprone (Ferriprox) is a medicine given as an oral tablet (pill).
It can cause side effects:
- You can vomit (throw up).
- You can have stomach pain.
- You can have diarrhea (watery poop).
- See more side effects.
Hemolysis is not common.
The donor’s red blood cells can breakdown inside your blood. There are two types of hemolysis.
Acute hemolytic transfusion reaction
- This happens during a transfusion (or within a few hours).
- You might feel fever, chills, chest pain, trouble breathing, low blood pressure, and pain on the side of your body.
Delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction (DHTR)
- This happens later, but within 3 weeks.
- You might feel pain, tired, weak, dizzy, or other signs of anemia.
- Your skin or eyes might turn yellow (jaundice).
- Sometimes, your own red blood cells can also get destroyed. This is called hyperhemolysis or bystander hemolysis. If this happens it may cause death if you do not get treatment immediately.
Hyperviscosity is not common.
- This is when your blood gets thicker and flows more slowly.
- When you add red blood cells from the donor, your blood has more red blood cells than normal.
- It can cause a pain crisis (vaso-occlusion).
- Your doctor does blood tests to keep track of the number of red blood cells you have in your blood. If you have too many red blood cells, your doctor may stop giving you blood transfusions.
Infectious disease transmission is very rare.
This is when you get sick from a virus in the blood from the donor.
- Donor blood is checked for viruses.
- If a virus is found, the blood is not used for transfusion. This means there is only a very small chance of getting a virus from blood that comes from a donor.