eli5 Do blood clinics test the blood before giving the donation to a patient?
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I know there is concern about HIV, etc, why don’t they just test it for diseases?
According to the Center for Disease control, so in the USA
“All blood for transfusion is tested for evidence of certain infectious disease pathogens, such as hepatitis B and C viruses and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”
Absolutely. All blood is checked for infectious diseases before being transfused to a patient.
Yes. If you donate blood they’ll likely tell you exactly what they test for in the paperwork you have to review before donating. They typically all test for the big ones mentioned by others but there may be more depending on where you’re wt and the particular organization. I just donated blood on Monday so I just experienced this firsthand. They actually take a separate vial like the doctor would for a diagnostic separate from the pint bag. The organization I donated with also wanted to be informed of any cold or flu symptoms that show up in the next few days. Probably because a lot of people who need blood transfusions are weak and have serious illnesses so what would be minor for me could be serious for them.
To add to what others have said: a blood donation is not only thoroughly tested, but also recieves a lot of processing. A “bloodbag” a patient recieves is far from the bag a donor donated.
The Plasma gets seperated off, the platelets get seperated, the white blood cells are removed and the plasma-free red blood cells get mixed with a nutrient solution.
Yes blood donations are tested as part of the processing before they are ever given to a recipient. If the donated blood has a virus or bacterial infection, that infection will be transferred to the recipient. Often the recipients of donated blood have weakened immune systems (cancer patients, people recovering from surgury, etc), so even a minor infection could be more serious for the recipient than the donor.
Blood transfusions were almost-always tested for compatibility before transfusion. A drop of the blood to be transfused was mixed with a drop of the recipient’s blood just before transfusion to confirm that the blood is compatible. This is called cross-match.
This type of test was performed before all blood transfusions, unless a dire emergency (for example major trauma), where group matched blood (if blood group known) or O negative blood (if blood group unknown) would be used without cross matching.
These days, however, blood group and compatibility analysis has improved, and computer databases are more robust and stricter electronic tracking with barcodes or similar is in place. This means that in most cases, electronic cross matching is now performed, where the computer database verifies all the compatibility issues. However, in some cases an electronic cross match isn’t always possible – for example, if someone has already had a lot of previous transfusions, so a proper cross match test will need to be performed in this type of case.
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