THE IMPACT OF AUTOLOGOUS BLOOD DONATION ON PERIOPERATIVE BLOOD TRANSFUSION

• Published in: Journal of the Japan Society of Blood Transfusion Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 656 - 660
• Main Authors: Tasaki, Tetsunori, Hashimoto, Chokichi, Abe, Rikiya, Tohyama, Yuriko, Ohto, Hitoshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: The Japan Society of Transfusion Medicine and Cell Therapy 1991
• ISSN: 0546-1448; 1883-8383
• DOI: 10.3925/jjtc1958.37.656

Almost four years have past since autologous blood donation program was introduced into our blood transfusion service, and an increasing number of patients scheduled for elective surgery has donated autologous blood. We experienced a total of 395 subjects as of May 31, 1991. In 1990, of the 1158 patients who underwent surgery in need of transfusion, 137 (12%) were autologous blood donors; 103 of these were operated on without homologous blood transfusion. Of the 480 units collected over a year, 86 (18%) were not used. As more experience has accumulated, it becomes clear that candidates with the age of older than 64 years or younger than 16 years were allowed to participate in this program considering their general conditions. Our data also indicate that the so-called “Hb=10g/dl, Hct=30% rule” for blood transfusion has become nothing but a standard, and autologous blood transfusion has also appeared to be beneficial from the viewpoint of cost-benefit ratio.