What will happen if you are given the wrong blood type? Will it be life threatening?

If you receive the wrong blood type during a blood transfusion the body will try to get rid of the difernet blood by sending an antibody, causing the red blood cells to clump together blocking blood vessels, and therefore causing the blood and everything in it to stop flowing and not be able to get to the brain or major organs. The blood cells then get destroyed by the body, causing yellow pigmentation (jaundice). This could be life threatening.

Which blood types are compatible with your blood type?

As the diagram below shows, most blood types can receive their own blood type and 1 or more others. When getting a blood transplant it is preferable for people to get blood that is the same type as theirs, but if their own blood type is not available they will use another type. AB+ can receive any blood type, but O- can only receive O- blood, but can give to any blood type, so it is on high demand for all patients with only 9% of the population having it.

What are the symptoms?

The most common symptoms of haemophilia are: bruising, spontaneous bleeding, bleeding into joints and associated pain and swelling, gastrointestinal tract and urinary tract haemorrhage, blood in the urine or stool, excessive and prolonged bleeding from cuts, tooth extraction, surgery bruises that are unusual in location or number, nosebleeds that won't stop, and painful or swollen joints.

How is Haemophilia managed and treated?

Haemophilia does not have a cure, but can be managed efficiently with current clotting factor treatment. People with haemophilia can't die of a simple cut, all a small cut needs is the regular treatment, people receive (bandaid). For deeper cuts the person affected bleeds no faster than anyone else but bleeds longer leading to blood loss. 'Bleeds' or spontaneous bleeding occur for no obvious reason or injury and bleed into muscles or joints. Recombinant factor is the most widely used type of concentrate. This is made by genetic engineering and contains little or no material from human blood or animals. Factor concentrates are infused (injected) into a vein at home by parents trained to treat their child, or by people themselves when they are confident enough to do it, or at the Haemophilia Centre.

The diference between the normal clotting pross and the haemophilia clotting process

How is Haemophillia contracted?

Haemophilia is mostly a genetic disease, males normally only have the symptoms and the women just carry it, very rarely receiving the symptoms. Haemophilia is passed through the X chromosome. When a father has the Haemophilia gene, none of the son's will have it but all the daughters will carry it. If a mother has the gene, there is a 50% chance that her sons will have haemophilia and a 50% chance her daughters will carry the gene. Although 1/3 people that are affected by haemophilia have no family history of the disease. This is  known as acquired haemophilia, this is when the persons immune system develops antibodies against one of their body’s own clotting factors and results in a reduced factor level in their blood. This normally occurs in older people and can equally effect men and women.

What is Haemophilia?

Haemophilia is a very rare bleeding disorder, which occurs due to blood clotting. Only 1,800 males have haemophilia in Australia and with 1 in every 30,000-50,000 males having the disease at birth it is quite unlikely. Women rarely get the disease but women carrying the gene can have bleeding problems.
Haemophilia bleeding is mainly internal, regulary into the muscles and joints.
There are two types of Haemophilia, Haemophilia A(Classic Haemophilia), this happens due to the deficiency of factor VIII. Whilst Haemophilia B (Christmas Disease), is caused by the deficiency of factor IX.
The disease takes place when the factor XI or factor VIII is deficient in the plasma of their blood.