Official Ebola update thread

post reply Forum Index » Health and Medicine

◄ 1 2 3 ... 53 54 55 ... 98 99 100 ► Go

Go to page...

10/19/2014 15:30

Subject: Re:Official Ebola update thread

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, a really great and informative interview with one of the doctors who treated Thomas Duncan in Dallas:

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2014/10/18/texas-health-presbyterian-doctor-talks-about-ebola-response/17483917/

Dumb interview. The interviewer was an idiot!

NP. The interview questions were dumb but it was interesting hearing from the doctor.

Question for those with more medical knowledge than I have: the doctor mentions that one of the survivors donating convalescent serum Type O blood and the other has Type A. I thought that O is a universal donor type, so wouldn't that be an option even if a patient doesn't have that blood type?

Plasma is the opposite of packed red cells in terms of donor types. It has something to do with the fact that the plasma is where the antibodies are, while the blood cells are where the antigens are.

So, while O- is the universal donor for blood cells, AB+is the universal donor for plasma.

Blood types O and A are more common than AB or B, especially among white people and Hispanics, so it's not surprising that Brantley, who has A and can donate to anyone with O or A has matched so many patients. Unfortunately Duncan must have had AB or B blood.

If it was my family member, I would have paid to have plasma from a type B survivor in Liberia flown to the USA.

Yeah, I don't think Duncan's family had that kind of money.

Beyond the money, it's just not as easy logistically as you make it sound. Ebola is hitting the rural parts of Liberia much much harder than the cities, so if there are Type B survivors they are in villages somewhere. It's hard to track down who they are; it's not like you can just tweet it out or even take out a newspaper ad and expect them to see it; most are so poor they don't even have that kind of access to news. If they somehow see/hear about it, it's a huge chance that they just know they got better -- they may have no clue about blood types. And even if you ID a survivor with the right blood type, say through drs. w/o borders -- it is logistically a huge challenge to have the blood drawn and flown all the way here quick enough. Unless you've got the US military or some kind of medical transport team helping out, how do you guarantee that it gets on the first flights out of there and goes directly to Dallas with the appropriate refrigeration etc.!? Easier said than done.

It can be done, they move other tissues around quickly. They have MANY survivors in Monrovia who are type B blood. That is about 20% of the survivors in Monrovia. That said, Duncan's family would not have known how to advocate. Even so, the US govt would have been soooo sluggish, that by the time travel clearance was allowed, he would have been dead.