Autologous Blood Donation? How/Cost?

[SkyHog]

My wife has an interesting conundrum. Apparently, no one can type her blood. She is either B+ or B-, but never consistently the same (even the same lab can randomly get a different result). Every doctor approaches this with the same "psssh, of course I can get it typed, they must not have known what they were doing," but across 3 states and dozens of doctors, no one has.

So - that said, we were talking about it today and it occurred to us that if she came of need to receive a blood transfusion, say in an emergency, it would be a crap shoot as to whether she got safe blood or not.

How can one store their own blood for future purposes such as this?

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

She can get plasma from anyone and she can get type O+ (universal donor)

er. something like that.
A dr will come along and correct me.

 

[flyingron]

The problem is that whole blood doesn't have a long shelf life. If she knows she has surgery coming up that might require a transfusion she can make autonomous donations, but otherwise it's kind of pointless.

Bryan: The universal donor is O- not O+.

Essentially you can give Rh- to Rh- or Rh+.
You can give blood that doesn't have the marker A or B to those who do have it.


If it's unclear if she has B- or B+ you can give her B- or O- blood.

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

I have o+ I thought that meant I could give to anyone but only recieve my own type. I guess that is reversed.

 

[flyingron]

I have o+ I thought that meant I could give to anyone but only recieve my own type. I guess that is reversed.

You can give to anybody with an RH+ type.
You can receive O+ or O-.

O+ is THE most common blood type there is.
O- is the universal donor.
AB+ is the universal recipient.

While that is the general type compatibility, there are other antigens involved as well which is why crossmatching is done.

 

[Doggtyred]

My wife has an interesting conundrum. Apparently, no one can type her blood. She is either B+ or B-, but never consistently the same (even the same lab can randomly get a different result). Every doctor approaches this with the same "psssh, of course I can get it typed, they must not have known what they were doing," but across 3 states and dozens of doctors, no one has.

So - that said, we were talking about it today and it occurred to us that if she came of need to receive a blood transfusion, say in an emergency, it would be a crap shoot as to whether she got safe blood or not.

How can one store their own blood for future purposes such as this?

Its not necessary to store her own. Its also not really practical unless she has a major procedure planned and coming up soon. If you HAVE such a need you can contact your local blood center for autologous donation for a specific instance. But it is unrealistic (and impractical) to expect to be able to indefinitely keep one or more units of "her" blood on reserve, in perpetuity.

In an emergency, she would be transfused with the type she is found to be at the time she needs it, and with the specific components she needs at that particular time (I very very rarely have transfused someone with "whole blood"... rather its.. packed cells.. platelets,.. cryo.. plasma... etc..). Blood banks never take the patients word for what type they are. Never. They will RECHECK it if you say they got it wrong, but they will not disregard what the lab result right in front of them indicates, because the result of a major blood type mismatch is pretty rough on the body, to the point of even being fatal.

And its possible of someone to completely change type in some rare circumstances. Worst case scenario, barring one of those rare circumstances, she will always be type B.. and can ALWAYS get B-.. As a matter of fact, are you sure thats not whats happening? That she's B+ and getting B- product from time to time? I'm guessing she might have been transfused from time to time?


But to answer your question, you would need a temperature controlled fridge with continuous logging, and the cells last only about 6 weeks in the fridge.. and you can only donate every weeks... and towards the end of that 6 week period the cells are getting pretty old and lose much of their benefit.. Do the math.

 

[SkyHog]

Its not necessary to store her own. Its also not really practical unless she has a major procedure planned and coming up soon. If you HAVE such a need you can contact your local blood center for autologous donation for a specific instance. But it is unrealistic (and impractical) to expect to be able to indefinitely keep one or more units of "her" blood on reserve, in perpetuity.

In an emergency, she would be transfused with the type she is found to be at the time she needs it, and with the specific components she needs at that particular time (I very very rarely have transfused someone with "whole blood"... rather its.. packed cells.. platelets,.. cryo.. plasma... etc..). Blood banks never take the patients word for what type they are. Never. They will RECHECK it if you say they got it wrong, but they will not disregard what the lab result right in front of them indicates, because the result of a major blood type mismatch is pretty rough on the body, to the point of even being fatal.

And its possible of someone to completely change type in some rare circumstances. Worst case scenario, barring one of those rare circumstances, she will always be type B.. and can ALWAYS get B-.. As a matter of fact, are you sure thats not whats happening? That she's B+ and getting B- product from time to time? I'm guessing she might have been transfused from time to time?


But to answer your question, you would need a temperature controlled fridge with continuous logging, and the cells last only about 6 weeks in the fridge.. and you can only donate every weeks... and towards the end of that 6 week period the cells are getting pretty old and lose much of their benefit.. Do the math.

To the best of my knowledge, she has never received a transfusion. They typed her during childbirth to determine the need for Rogam (sp?), and never seemed to get consistent results for either childbirth, and also when switching doctors after explaining the confusion.

I doubt she is switching blood types...it's really weird.

Good to know she can receive negative blood if she is positive rh.

 

[steingar]

She can almost certainly receive b- blood. Playing the odds, most people are +. She might carry a hypomorphic allele at the Rh locus. If this is such a concern you can have her Rh alleles sequenced to see what's going on. Any lab that does sequencing can do it, probably isn't even that expensive.