I recently had major surgery and got two units of blood in during the operation and two more post-op. Post-op before I got the blood, they typed my blood again, and a nurse stayed in the room while I got the blood and I wondered why. This comment makes it clear.

Does the concept of O -ve as a universal donor type apply at all outside of the ABO group, and am I understanding correctly from your comment that even within the APO group O -ve compatibility would still be subject to this antigen matching?

Don't we have synthetic blood, at least capable of transporting oxygen ?

> Minor antigens come into play when crossmatching for infants

I’m reminded of that American high schooler in Uganda running an orphanage and ran into this exact issue when doing a transfusion on a malnourished infant. [1]

She was skilled enough to perform a transfusion and knowledgeable enough to test for a ABO+/- match but not so knowledgeable as to be sensitive to this issue with disastrous results.

On the other hand her clinics metrics were on par or slightly above the local hospitals so it’s not clear to me they would have faired better getting care elsewhere there.

[1] https://stories.showmax.com/za/hbos-docuseries-savior-comple...

With a single known case of somebody producing antibodies against the antigen, it might be a bit hard to say how many transfusions it typically takes to develop a sensitivity.

Type O Negative here, they all kill me so luckily I don't have to guess!

That's interesting; I didn't know that to realize it was missing.

FYI, the only English article at the time of posting was Entrevue's, which is why it was initially chosen. But indeed, Le Monde's article is much better.

TMZ is a very respectable publication if you compare it to Entrevue...

You'll need to email the mods.

A few years ago, I made a comment in a similar topic asking for more details, and I got a very good reply. Hat tip to tait:

> It's complicated.

> There are more than 35 red blood cell groups (see https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/blood-typ... for a nice writeup). For each of those blood groups, there is more than one possible configuration of some protein or carbohydrate (something like more than one possible genetic sequence leading to more than one kind of molecule on the surface of the RBCs).

> And, even with ABO, there can be infrequent variations that make things more complicated (see https://professionaleducation.blood.ca/en/transfusion/best-p... for more).

> For the other blood groups, I think every case the groups were identified because a patient somewhere made an antibody, causing either a transfusion reaction (if not tested ahead of time) or, more likely, a positive (incompatible) reaction on in compatibility testing.

> [...]

It's worth reading the full original comment because it has more interesting details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507052

Is that what’s going on with organ matching?

Why are A and B considered to belong to the same "system"? They combine with each other combinatorially in exactly the same way that rhesus factor combines with them, and presumably the same way that all other systems combine with all other systems.

When people are directly piped to each other in movies, I often wonder if there is some negotiation protocol like PD that ensures that the donor continues to charge the recipient, even when their capacities both reach equilibrium.

Japanese culture looks at blood type as indicative of personality, like horoscopes.