RESUMEN
Blood transfusion is often a life-saving measure for surgical patients. In the era of numerous blood-transmitted diseases and known documented complications, however, blood transfusion is limited to patients who re q u i re blood replacement therapy. In elective surgery, blood transfusion is quite uncommon and most of the cross-matched blood is not used. Time and effort spent in cross-matching for each patient undergoing a surgical procedure is considerable. This study was initiated to determine ways to reduce the unnecessary demands on our blood bank and to support a suggested blood transfusion policy in our institution. Materials and This review was carried out at King Fahd Hospital of the University, Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It covered a four year period, from January 1995 - December 1998. During this time, a proposed blood utilization policy was submitted to all major departments for review and approval. The department of surgery was one of the first departments to accept and attempt to implement the suggested policy. This study reviewed the pre- and post-policy blood utilization. The calculated cross-match transfusion [CT] ratio for the two years after implementing the policy was 2.1:1 as compared to 4.8:1 before implementation. This is a 50% reduction. Despite the drop in the CT ratio, the type and screen requests increased only by 10.2%. The implementation of our blood utilization policy is a very important method in saving hospital resources and manpower. This policy, if adopted nationwide, will lead to enormous grand total savings that can be directed towards improvement of blood bank and hospital services