General treatment of bleeding disorders consists mainly of temporary replacement therapy by transfusion.
But the paper said that the animal form of the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, "has apparently been transmitted from one sheep to another by transfusion".
If shock occurs in an otherwise healthy person, the lost blood generally is replaced by transfusion into a vein.
The baby may be anemic at birth, which can be treated by transfusion with antigen-negative red cells.
Swiss officials presented Dr. Epstein with what they described as new statistics suggesting the unlikelihood that the human form of mad cow disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, could be transmitted by transfusion.
Blood specialists say that while there are probably some cases of H.I.V. transmission by transfusion every year, fewer become public, in part because of the difficulty of identifying a source that is, after all, unsuspected.
Dr. Richard Benjamin, chief medical officer for the American Red Cross, said physicians and patients need to weigh the benefits against the small risk of harm caused by transfusion.
One frequent scenario involved patients with heart disease who needed coronary-artery bypass grafts or cardiac-valve-replacement surgeries, both of which involved substantial blood loss and were nearly always accompanied by transfusion.
Antibodies to the substances alpha- and beta-isoagglutinin, which occur naturally in the blood, destroy the donor red cells when incompatible blood is given by transfusion.
There are many lifesaving surgical procedures that are possible only because the blood loss inevitable in the operation can be made up by transfusion.
Her anaemia was improved by transfusion and oral iron preparation.
