ABSTRACT
I. Introduction and Historical Perspective Great strides have been made in the safety of allogeneic blood transfusions since their widespread introduction in the early 1900s. Complications such as major blood group incompatibility, bacterial contamination of stored products, and transmission of infectious agents such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C have plummeted with improved testing and quality assurance in blood banking (1). Accordingly, transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) has emerged as a serious complication of transfusion therapy and the leading cause of transfusion-related fatalities reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (L. Holness, personal communication). Although TRALI was formally described 25 years ago (2), it is very likely that TRALI as a clinical entity has been present since the early days of allogeneic transfusions.
