Exchange transfusion
blood transfusion in which the patient's blood or components of it are exchanged with other blood or blood products
An exchange transfusion (ET) is a blood transfusion in which the patient's blood or components of it are exchanged with (replaced by) other blood or blood products. The patient's blood is removed and replaced by donated blood or blood components. This exchange transfusion can be performed manually or using a machine (apheresis).
Most blood transfusions involve adding blood or blood products without removing any blood; these are also known as simple transfusions or top-up transfusions.
Exchange transfusion is used in the treatment of a number of diseases, including sickle-cell disease and hemolytic disease of the newborn. Partial exchange might be required for polycythemia.
Nearly all exchange transfusions are allogeneic (that is, the new blood or blood products come from another person or persons, via donated blood); autologous exchange transfusion is possible (using autologous blood banking), but there are not many situations in which a need for it arises, as most autologous transfusions involve no exchange.
Description
An exchange transfusion requires that the patient's blood can be removed and replaced. In most cases, this involves placing one or more thin tubes, called catheters, into a blood vessel. The exchange transfusion is done in cycles: each one usually lasts a few minutes.
“Exchange transfusion” enters the record as blood transfusion in which the patient's blood or components of it are exchanged with other blood or blood products. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Exchange, transfusion and blood can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Exchange transfusion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.