Footnote

a According to the textbook Modern Blood Banking and Transfusion Practices by Dr. Denise M. Harmening, “delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction” can occur “in a patient who has previously been sensitized by transfusion, pregnancy, or transplant.” In such cases, the antibodies that cause a patient to react adversely to a transfusion are “not detectable by standard pretransfusion methods.” According to Dailey’s Notes on Blood, hemolysis “can be triggered even when only a small amount of incompatible . . . blood is administered. When renal shutdown does occur the patient is slowly poisoned because the kidneys cannot remove impurities from the blood.”