Red blood cell transfusion strategies and Maximum surgical blood ordering schedule

Blood transfusion is one of the practices that is in vogue because it expands blood volume and purportedly improves the oxygen carrying capacity. Despite this supposed physiological benefit, paradoxically, both anaemia and transfusion are independently associated with organ injury and increased morbidity. Historically, transfusion was used to maintain blood haemoglobin concentration above 10 g/dL and a haematocrit above 30%. There is now a greater emphasis on interventions to reduce the use of transfusion as it is a scarce and expensive resource with many serious adverse effects. Institutional maximum surgical blood ordering schedule algorithm developed with data analysis and consensus of surgeons, anaesthesiologists and blood banks can reduce the overuse of blood. A PubMed search was performed with search words/combination of words ‘erythrocyte transfusion, adverse effects, economics, mortality, therapy, therapeutic use and utilisation’. Search yielded a total of 1541 articles that were screened for clinical relevance for the purpose of this review.