Managing blood supplies by using blood more judiciously

Medpage has the story:

Doing More With Less Blood — Blood management programs can save money and resources  by Steven Frank, MD 

"At Johns Hopkins, since our patient blood management efforts began in 2012, we launched two distinct programs running side by side synergistically. The first program aims to reduce avoidable transfusions for the roughly 99% of patients who accept blood, while the second program provides optimal care for the remaining 1% of patients who wish to avoid transfusion for personal or religious reasons, the vast majority of whom are Jehovah's Witnesses. 

...

"treating preoperative anemia with $4 worth of iron tablets to avoid using $400 worth of blood just makes sense. Wouldn't you rather come to surgery with your own red blood cells, rather than needing a transfusion with someone else's?

""Keeping the blood in the patient" is the other major concept behind patient blood management. Simple things can reduce bleeding, such as keeping patients warm during surgery; lowering the blood pressure (controlled hypotension); tranexamic acid (an inexpensive medication that reduces bleeding by about 30%opens in a new tab or window); Cell Savers to return surgical blood loss to the patient; and using smaller phlebotomy tubes to send lab tests. All of these strategies can be bundled together to achieve this goal.

"After a decade of experience, we crunched the numbers to assess our return on investment (ROI) with our comprehensive patient blood management program, while also looking at patient outcomes. The bottom line was a 7.5-fold ROI, meaning that for every dollar spent on patient blood management, over $7 were either saved or generated in return. This calculation is based on a $3 million annual reduction in blood acquisition cost, along with a $5 million annual net margin on revenue generated by caring for patients under the Center for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery.

"At the same time, clinical outcomes were either the same or better while giving less blood. Heart attack, stroke, thrombotic events, and respiratory and kidney problems were unchanged, while the incidence of hospital-acquired infection decreased. This latter finding is very believable based on high-level evidence (meta-analysis of 18 randomized trials) that transfusions predispose patients to infections. Furthermore, by avoiding transfusions for those who do not need them, we make more blood available for those who really do -- like trauma victims and cancer patients.

"Given the ongoing blood shortages that we are facing, which has been called a "crisis" in the blood industry, patient blood management looks like a giant step towards the triple aim in medicine: improving the patient experience, clinical outcomes, and cost."

**********

See, earlier in the NEJM:

Crisis in the Sustainability of the U.S. Blood System

by Harvey G. Klein, M.D., J. Chris Hrouda, B.H.S., and Jay S. Epstein, M.D., October 12, 2017

N Engl J Med 2017; 377:1485-1488

DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsb1706496