| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effect of the transfusion of blood received 1500 rad exposure upon the immune response in 14 patients underwent various type of cardiac surgery. 13 patients received known amounts banked blood and irradiated fresh blood, while one patient received a lot of amounts of banked and irradiated and non-irradiated fresh blood. The authors studied the numbers of lymphocytes as well as lymphocyte subsets such as pan-T cells, B cells, helper/inducer T cells (TH/I), cytotoxic/suppressor T cells (Tc/s), active T cells, natural killer (NK) cells and NK cell activity during two weeks after surgeries. In all 14 patients, pan-T lymphocytes decreased markedly in a few days after surgeries, but increased to higher levels on the eight postoperative day than the levels preoperatively. TH/I and TC/S lymphocytes changed on the similar pattern as pan-T lymphocytes. Active T and B cells did not change significantly in two weeks. The number and activity of NK cells gave the lowest levels on the second postoperative day and did not recover to the preoperative levels in two weeks. One patient received non-irradiated fresh blood showed the similar immune response as other 13 patients, while he gave the lower levels than others did. This patient died of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)-like syndrome on the 36th postoperative day. It may be thought that the transfusion of irradiated blood would prevent the host from GVHD and gave the better effects on the immune response than that of non-irradiated blood following open-heart surgeries. |
