Question

QUESTION 10 A person with type O blood has been involved in a car accident and excessive bleeding necessitates a blood transfusion. Due to an error by a careless laboratory technician, the person is given type B blood. Explain what will happen. (4 marks)

Answer 1

In the ABO blood group, there are four blood groups determined by following features:

BLOOD GROUP	Antigens present on Red blood cell surface	Antibodies present in the blood plasma
A	A antigen	Anti-B
B	B antigen	Anti-A
AB	A & B antigen	nil
O	nil	Anti-A & Anti-B

When wrong blood transfusion occurs, clumping of RBC occurs due to reaction between donor’s antigen and recipient’s antibody, a process called agglutination.

Since blood group O has no antigens, hence this can be given to any group of blood without agglutination and so ‘O’ is called Universal donor whereas blood group is Universal recipient since it can receive blood from any blood group due to absence of both antibodies.

In the given question, a person with type O blood is given type B blood by error and hence due to reaction between donor’s antigen i.e B antigen with the recipient’s antibody i.e Anti-B, agglutination will occur leading to death of the recipient i.e the person with type O blood will die.