SIX months after Hongkong's first heart transplant, surgeons received a second heart donation - but could not use it because it was of the wrong blood group.
Dr Tse Tak-ming, senior medical officer at Grantham Hospital, which carried out the first transplant last December, said doctors were disappointed not to be able to use the heart, which was donated about a month ago, but felt it would be too risky.
The woman donor was blood group O, which did not match any of the patients awaiting transplants.
While it was theoretically possible to transplant a heart of a different blood group to the patient's, there were other factors which prompted doctors to reject the heart.
The donor, who died in a traffic accident, was in her 50s.
''That made us a little bit worried there is a possibility that the heart itself has some minor complications of coronary heart disease which we wouldn't know about until we had transplanted it,'' he said.
