An elderly patient in Wexford General Hospital who received platelets from a blood donation was never told the product she received had been infected, the tribunal was told. The donation was found one day later to have been HIV positive.
The woman received the platelets on December 9th, 1985, the day they had been donated by a person referred to as Donor C.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Gerard Durcan SC, in an opening statement to the second phase of the tribunal, said that because of their short shelf life at the time platelets sometimes had to be issued in an emergency before they could be HIV tested. At the time HIV testing was carried out by the BTSB a day after donations were accepted.
In this case, he said, an urgent request was made to the BTSB by Wexford General Hospital on December 9th, 1985, for platelets. Untested platelets were issued and transfused into the elderly patient.
When the blood donation from which they had come tested positive the next day, the donation was discarded. "However it appears that following the positive test, no effort was made to trace the platelets which had already been issued and the elderly patient was not informed of what had occurred," Mr Durcan said.
He added that the patient died of her underlying illness seven months later.
"While it would appear that this was the only recorded occasion on which untested platelets were issued which were derived from a positive donation, none the less the issue of untested platelets was by no means an isolated event," counsel said.
He continued that 362 units of platelet concentrate were issued without HIV testing on an emergency basis between October 1985 and June 1986. A further 95,760 platelet units from untested blood were issued between July 1986 and June 1990. None came from HIV positive blood donations.
After June 1990 a rapid HIV test became available and the issuing of untested platelets ceased.
"The tribunal will have to consider whether the issue of untested platelets to the Wexford patient was justified and also whether the patient's doctor should have been informed of the fact that the donation from which the platelets had been derived was subsequently found to be positive for HIV antibodies," Mr Durcan said.
Platelets are small blood cells which are essential to enable blood to clot properly. Thousands are issued for transfusion every year in the Republic, particularly for patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer or leukaemia.
This is mainly because chemotherapy damages the patients' bone marrow cells, where the platelets are made.