Blood transfusion in orthotopic liver transplantation: six-year experience.

Patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) are susceptible to massive blood loss and require transfusion. Possible reasons for increased transfusion demands include platelet abnormalities, thrombocytopenia secondary to hypersplenism, clotting factor deficiencies, fibrinolysis, increased surgical blood loss associated with portal hypertension and previous surgical procedures, and hypothermia. The purpose of this study was to review trends in blood product usage during our first 6 years of experience performing OLT.

Perioperative hemodynamic heterogeneity of brain dead organ donors.

Brain death is accompanied by a loss of homeostatic mechanisms leading to physiologic changes which have been shown to be detrimental to donor organs prior to procurement. The management of the brain dead organ donor (BDOD) is frequently left to transplant coordinators, often registered nurses, who follow standardized protocols for that management. The use of a standardized protocol assumes that these donors display homogeneity. To investigate this assumption, the anesthesiology fellows and faculty involved in multiorgan transplantation at the Baylor University Medical Center/UTSWMC conducted a study into the perioperative hemodynamics of the BDOD.