Every year, approximately 40 million units of blood are donated by 23 million volunteer blood donors worldwide for patients in need.
All medical intervention comes with some level of risk to the patient.
Extensive measures have been taken to eliminate transfusion-related complications, yet the number of patients who still experience adverse transfusion reactions remains a significant concern for clinicians. A blood transfusion is an organ transplant. Most of the complications that result from transfusion are very similar to the body's rejection of a graft. Donor-specific factors cause transfusion complications in the recipient such as fever, chills, antibody buildup or an allergic reaction. These leukocytes, or white blood cells, which are present in blood collected from volunteer donors, stimulate the production of antibodies that induce many undesirable reactions.