Medicine: Mixed Blood

Over two years ago Dr. Arthur G. Schroeder operated on Mrs. Leota Hayden in Chicago's Ravenswood Hospital. After the operation Mrs. Hayden needed a blood transfusion. She had Type IV blood; therefore the donor's blood had to be of the same type. Transfusions of Types I, II, or III blood would clot in her serum, block her circulation.

Dr. Schroeder had tested Mrs. Hayden's brother-in-law, George Mohr, and knew that he had Type IV blood. George Mohr was waiting in the reception room. "Bring in the donor," called Dr. Schroeder to a nurse. The nurse phoned a hospital employe, who ran to the reception room. There, nervously pacing the floor, was Arthur Fuller, Type II, waiting to give a transfusion to his mother. "Come along," said the employe.

Obediently Arthur Fuller trotted down the hall into the operating room. On a table lay a woman, swathed in white sheets, who Arthur Fuller assumed was his mother. Dr. Schroeder assumed that Arthur Fuller was the Type IV donor he wanted. He pumped Arthur Fuller's Type II blood into Mrs. Hayden's Type IV veins. In a few hours she was dead.

Mrs. Hayden's husband, Fred, brought suit against Dr. Schroeder, demanded damages of $10,000. Last week a Chicago jury decided that whatever negligence there had been was not Dr. Schroeder's, and Widower Hayden lost his case.

Although thousands of lives are saved each year through blood transfusions, errors in blood typing are not rare. Most of the errors are due to faulty technique and interpretation rather than mistaken identification. In the New England Journal of Medicine last fortnight, Dr. William Dameshek, Harvard blood specialist, remarked that he had seen five serious blood-transfusion accidents in Boston hospitals within the last two years. Blood typing is a delicate process, said he, and too often it is left to "poorly trained medical students, poorly trained interns or technicians. . . ." Dr. Dameshek urged State departments of health to jack up the rules.