ABSTRACT
The nation’s red blood cell (RBC) supply is safer now than it ever has been. The number of days of life lost as a result of transfusions probably reached a minimum by 1990 as a result of improved testing and other blood bank proce dures (1). However, it will always be impossible to specify the exact compo nents in a unit of donated human blood, a desired and increasingly required standard of the pharmaceutical industry (2). Beyond the risks of infectious dis ease transmission are the risks of infectious complications after surgical proce dures, possibly due to immunosuppressive effects of transfusion (3,4). Thus, we cannot deny that new, as yet undiscovered, dangerous infectious agents might be transmitted by blood transfusion, and we are obliged to endeavor, as clinicians, to transfuse only when there is a clear clinical indication.
