Boston Herald, MA
May 20 2007

Death spurs donor registry plea

By Jessica Fargen
Boston Herald Health & Medical Reporter
Sunday, May 20, 2007 – Updated: 12:39 PM EST

Vera Tutunjian was a hardy 84-year-old grandma who survived Armenia’s
20th century horrors only to die from a reaction to a simple blood
transfusion that, although rare, is preventable and remains a silent
threat to the nation’s blood supply.

Her three children are hoping a plan to create a state registry
to track blood donors could save lives.

`We are still in shock over it, that such a thing can even happen
in this day and age of blood transfusions,’ said Allan Tutunjian,
whose mom died in March 2004, hours after a transfusion at Mount
Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. `I’m utterly disgusted and shocked.’

Tutunjian said the hospital told him his mother fell victim to
Transfusion Related Acute Lung Injury, or TRALI, the leading cause of
death related to blood transfusions in the nation. It kills 35 to 400
people a year, according to federal figures and experts’ estimates.

Dr. Richard Benjamin, chief medical officer at the national Red
Cross, said TRALI is more of a risk to transfusion recipients than
HIV, which has been virtually eliminated from the blood supply.

`This is the one I’m most scared of,’ he said.

He said TRALI is triggered in about one in 5,000 blood
transfusions, although it rarely kills. It could be prevented with
better screening and a national registry, he said.

Rep. Peter Koutoujian (D-Newton) hopes the creation of a state
registry is a first step. He has filed a bill that would be known as
the Vera Tutunjian Act and would require hospitals to report cases of
TRALI to a Department of Public Health registry. To his knowledge, he
said, no other state has such a registry.

About 20 percent of women who have ever had children carry
antibodies in their blood that, when introduced into certain
recipients’ bodies, can prompt white blood cells to attack their
lungs. There is currently no screening for the antibodies that
trigger TRALI.

Dr. Ella Griffiths, medical director of the blood donor center at
Mount Auburn Hospital, said little is known about TRALI, which was
first described as a condition in the mid-1980s. `You cannot predict
who will get TRALI because there is no good test for TRALI,’ said
Griffiths, who could not comment on Tutunjian’s death because of
patient privacy laws. `It’s difficult to predict who will get it.’

In rare TRALI cases, a patient’s lungs fill with fluid and they
die within hours of the transfusion.

That’s what happened to Vera Tutunjian, who was originally
hospitalized for flulike symptoms, said her daughter, Robin Tutunjian
Hines of Lexington. What makes her death so hard to bear is that it
was a miracle that she was even born, she said. She was born on a
train in Moscow in 1919, as her Armenian parents fled the Turkish
genocide.

`She had a very hard life to start and then to end it so
tragically was just more painful for us to bear,’ she said, adding
that she hopes the registry could one day save some other family from
similar grief. `I’m pleased we can help others.’

Jessica Fargen is the Herald’s health and medical writer. Read her
blog at bostonherald.com or contact her at jfargen@bostonherald.com.