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Congratulations to Dr. Aditi Khandelwal, winner of the 2019-2020 Lay Science Writing Competition. Today’s post features her heartfelt winning entry.

Do you know of an individual whose contributions might be worthy of the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award? To receive this honour, a nominee’s landmark contributions must be recognized as both extraordinary and world class in the field of transfusion or transplantation medicine, stem cell or cord blood research in Canada and/or abroad. Nominations are open until May 19, 2020.

Although it doesn’t happen often, sometimes patients will have a bad reaction during or after a blood transfusion. Surveillance systems set up to monitor the safety of the blood supply in Canada keep track of incidents like these so that issues potentially affecting patient safety can be identified. A recently published guide on reporting adverse transfusion events, available on Canadian Blood Services’ professional education website, helps make the reporting process easier to understand.

When doctors select compatible red blood cell units for transfusion into a patient, they don’t consider the sex of the patient and whether the donor is the same (sex-matched) or opposite sex (sex-mismatched). But a study led by Dr. Michelle Zeller, Canadian Blood Services medical officer and assistant professor in the department of medicine at McMaster University, suggests that the role of donor sex in red blood cell compatibility may be worth a closer look.