This is the first of a series of newly prepared guidelines on alternatives to allogeneic blood transfusion. Further guidelines including the use of cell salvage and of pharmacological approaches to blood conservation will be published in due course. Decades of clinical application demonstrate that it is quite feasible to auto-transfuse blood that has been collected and stored for an interval of...

Transfusion of blood and blood components is a common practice in obstetric wards but it is not without risk. The incidence of transfusion reactions varies from 4 in every hundred transfusions for non-haemolytic reactions to one in every 40,000 for haemolytic transfusion reactions. The physiological basis of blood transfusion is outlined in this article. Most of the donated blood is processed i...

Oncological surgery, obstetric haemorrhage and severe trauma are the most challenging conditions for establishing clinical recommendations use of cell salvage. When likelihood allogeneic transfusion is high, intraoperative this blood-saving technique would be justified, but specific patient selection criteria needed. The main concerns in case oncological surgery reinfusion tumour cells, thereby...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine a method to decrease the use of homologous blood during openheart surgery using a simple blood-conservation protocol. We removed autologous blood from the patient before bypass and used isovolumetric substitution. We present the results of this protocol on morbidity and mortality of surgery patients from two distinct time periods. METHODS Pati...