A road crash victim who died hours after receiving a transfusion of the wrong blood type would not have survived the accident anyway, an expert said yesterday.
However, an inquest into the death heard conflicting versions from a doctor and a nurse on how four bags of the wrong type of blood were administered.
Delivery worker Tsui Wai-ming, 20, was admitted to Queen Mary Hospital on August 9 last year after an accident while heading towards Aberdeen on Shek Pai Wan Road.
He died the following morning, a few hours after blood of types 'A' and 'B' - incompatible with his own 'O' type - were given to him by staff in the intensive care unit.
Dr Chan Tai-kwong, Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said the transfusion was 'unfortunate', but that Tsui's condition was 'already very poor'.
He said that the incompatible transfusion had played little or no part in causing Tsui's death and the major cause of death was severe injuries to the head and neck.
Another expert, Dr Dawson Fong To-sang, told Coroner David Thomas that only one in five patients with such critical injuries had a chance of survival.