Blood transfusion safety: correct patient identification is essential

Abstract

Vickers and colleagues’ recommendation to implement electronic blood management systems for transfusion safety is timely.1 Most reports made to the UK haemovigilance scheme, Serious Hazards of Transfusion (SHOT), each year are “near miss wrong blood in tube” (NM-WBIT) incidents—where the blood in the tube is not that of the patient named on the tube—which accounted for 986 of 3833 reports in 2023.2 Most cases are detected …