We recently had a patient that we had a previous blood type of O pos and now he is typing as B pos. After much research we found out that he had a bone marrow transplant. The hospital that performed the transplant said they transfused him with O positive blood . My question is for future reference when this happens do you always go with the patient's previous type or just give O.

thanks

I think you give what will be compatible with any antibodies he has.

Exactly. You give what is compatible with the patient's blood. But you must repeat the Blood group, one patient was B neg and after transplant engraftment became AB pos so we were able to give her positive blood and basically any blood group but we stuck to O pos as long as it was available. She later relapsed and we went back to B neg.

Relapse does not always mean her Blood group will revert back. Initially she did not, later she did.

We go with what the current type is and note in history that they had a BMT. We also had a patient that relapsed, but her type did not revert back to her original ABO.

You need to transfuse with products that are compatible with both the recipient bood type and the donor blood type until the recipient is totally engrafted with donor. AABB Technical Manual has a wonderful chapter on this subject and a very simple table of what types to use depending on the blood types of recipient and donor.

Thanks everyone for your help. This is the first time we have had this situation, but we are building a new hospital with a Cancer Treatment Center on the campus and we wanted to research this for future cases.