The result is that blood transfusion is now immensely safe. Fewer than one in two million transfusions produce serious problems that is better than most prescription medicines and far safer than any surgery. The main recipients of red blood cells are victims of accidents, mainly on the roads, and people needing heart and other transplant surgery. But there are many people who need transfusions not of the red cells, but of other components in the blood. They include fragments of cells called platelets, that are given to people with a particular bleeding problem called thrombocytopenic purpura People with this illness would bleed to death internally without their platelet transfusions, each of which is made by making concentrations of platelets from dozens of blood donations.
Platelet transfusions are real life-savers.
Leukaemia patients are often given transfusions of stimulated stem cells , very special white cells, taken either from their own or other people s blood, that will re- stock their bone marrow after radiotherapy or chemotherapy has been used to kill off their cancerous marrow cells. Blood transfusion medicine has gone a long way from just the organisation of taking and giving blood. It is vital for as many as possible people to donate, so that stocks can be kept up for these immensely useful and life-saving treatments. Yet a quarter of all donors are lost to the transfusion services every year. Please, if you have been a donor and have lapsed, go back.