Home Journal List Journal of the Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists of Pakistan Volume-10 Article Details

Rh Disease Eradication

Abstract

The Rh disease has a long history starting form HDFN in 1609 and resulting in availability of Anti D immunoglobulin in 1966. A French midwife, Louise Bourgeois worked at the royal court of King Henry IV and Queen Marie de Medicis in 1609 –She described the birth of twins.The first one had hydrops and died immediately. The second one, rapidly became jaundiced and, than developed neurological symptoms –kernicter us and died on the third day. In 1892, Ballantyne described a disease in newborn with icterus and odema.1 In 1932 Diamond reported Erythroblastos is secondary to severe haemolys is,and cause was still unknown .In I938 Ruth Darrow from W&CH, Chicago identified the (antibody-related) pathogenesis. Another case involving Rh incompatibility was reported in 1939, although the Rh factor, a protein found on the surface of red blood cells, had not yet been discovered. This case was reported byanimmune-hematologist, Philip Levine and physician, Rufus Stetson, who published their case inThe Journal of theAmerican Medical Association. This was a twenty-five year old woman who presented into a local hospital during her thirty-third week of pregnancy with labor pains and vaginal bleeding.She delivered a dead fetus with a weight of one pound and five ounces. The patient received a blood transfusion from her husband, as both had blood-type O. Ten minutes after completing the transfusion, the patient developed a chill and began feeling pain in her head and legs. Due to excessive vaginal bleeding hysterectomy was done, followed by another blood transfusion from a different donor. Throughout her entire visit, the patient received transfusions from 104 Type O blood donors. Remarkably, the mother showed no blood transfusion reaction to twenty-one of those donors. Further tests indicated that the patient’s serum, or the plasma in the blood minus the clotting factors, specifically agglutinated her donors’ cells—or rather, 80 percent of all her blood transfusions.

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