Blood management of patients undergoing cardiac surgery / 中国胸心血管外科临床杂志

ABSTRACT

@#Red blood cell (RBC) transfusions are frequently used in cardiac surgery. A minority of patients assume most of the blood products transfusion during and after cardiac operations. Observational analysis of transfusion in patients undergoing cardiac surgery has uniformly demonstrated that RBC transfusion is associated with a significantly increasing risk of all-cause mortality and other serious adverse outcomes. In addition, it is an established fact that such patients can tolerate relatively low hemoglubin (Hb) levels. Consequently, it becomes widely accepted that appropriate limitation of transfusions could confer a substantial benefit to patients and decrease the use of limited resource. As a result, a restrictive threshold for blood transfusion is likely to be favored under most circumstances. However, an increasing amount of data differing from the observational analysis shows that clinical outcomes in patients who received transfusions with restrictive thresholds for Hb level are not superior to those with liberal thresholds. It has created a new uncertainty regarding the use of a restrictive threshold for transfusion during the perioperative period of cardiac surgery.