Syed Shahid Nafees Zaidi, Nausheen Bakht, Muhammad Waseem, Tahir Iqbal, Nasir Ali.
Strategy for open heart surgery in a non-cross matchable blood scenario.
Pak Armed Forces Med J Jan ;66(3):452-3.

To date thirty-three different blood group systems (including the ABO and Rh systems) have so far been recognized by the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT)1. The commonest is ABO followed by the Rhesus (D) system. Rare blood groups are also present in a very small proportion of population and so are occasionally encountered in clinical practice2. To name a few of these rare groups are MNS, P, Lutheran, Kell, Lewis, Duffy, Kidd, Diego, Colton, Cromer, Dombroch and Gerbich3. We report a case of a patient whose scheduled open heart surgery had to be deferred because of cross match failure. All the available techniques in a modern well equipped blood bank failed to detect the culprit antigen responsible for it. The specific antigen was subsequently diagnosed from a European institute. The patient was operated at a later date and is now leading a healthy life.

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