This story is from July 4, 2015

Man with rare blood group undergoes surgery

In a rare case involving a unique blood group, Bombay Blood, a 57-year-old resident from Thrissur was operated for valve replacement on Friday morning in a city hospital.
Man with rare blood group undergoes surgery
KOCHI: In a rare case involving a unique blood group, Bombay Blood, a 57-year-old resident from Thrissur was operated for valve replacement on Friday morning in a city hospital.
Though the patient, Sukumaran K V, arrived at the hospital a couple of days ago as a referral case from Thrissur, it was only during the pre-surgical tests it came to light that he belonged to the rare blood group (HH), also called the Bombay Blood.

Immediately, the search began for possible donors. There are only 20 registered donors of this group in the state. Across the country, around 178 donors have been registered in the blood donors groups. Doctors said that they had two donors, one each from Ernakulam and Kottayam waiting in the hospital, in case they needed to do blood transfusion during surgery. Two others were on standby in Thrissur and Kottayam.
"The surgery was not a complicated one. It was a valve replacement, what was of concern was the blood replacement," said Dr Jose Chacko Periappuram, head of department of cardiothoracic surgery, Lisie Heart Institute, Kochi. "We have been focusing on aggressive 'bloodless' surgery where the requirement is very minimal and in this case also, we have used advanced technology like �cell saver techniques' to check bleeding and blood loss," said Dr Jacob Abraham, chief cardiac anaesthetist. The techniques worked and Sukumaran did not need any donor blood.
However, for Sukumaran life has changed. He is now part of this exclusive group which can only receive blood from this group, but are universal donors. "Fortunately for him, he never needed blood till now. Also, one private laboratory had tested it as O+ve while another detected it as hh but did not tell the patient about it," he said.
He is now stable and has been shifted to the ICU.
The Bombay blood group is not registered as a separate group in Kerala. "There has been no request for cardiac patients, but there was a young cancer patient who died recently," said Jishnu Raj, volunteer of the group that networked the donors.
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