How does blood type matching work?
A More Technical Explanation of ABO Organ Matching In the case of liver, heart and lung transplants no ‘matching’ is done except for blood group (O,A,B,AB) and organ size. An O organ can be used in an O, A, B, or AB patient, whereas, an O patient can only receive an O organ. The reason it works this way is because cells have proteins for the blood group on their surface such that: AB patients have both A and B proteins A patients have A but not B protein B patients have B but not A O patients have neither protein. If a patient lacks particular proteins, they develop antibodies to the ones they are lacking (the reason for this is unclear): AB patients develop no antibodies A patients develop antibodies against B B patients develop antibodies against A O patients develop antibodies against A and B proteins. Now in practice, if a patient has a transplant with an organ that has proteins on it (say an A organ that has A proteins on it) and that patient already has antibodies against that pr
