HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?

Continue with: QUALITY ALTERNATIVES TO TRANSFUSION

Note, there are alternatives! This becomes understandable when we review why blood is transfused.

The hemoglobin in the red cells carries oxygen needed for good health and life. So if a person has lost a lot of blood, it might seem logical just to replace it. Normally you have about 14 or 15 grams of hemoglobin in every 100 cubic centimeters of blood.   (Another measure of the concentration is hematocrit, which is commonly about 45 percent.) The accepted "rule" was to transfuse a patient before surgery if his hemoglobin was below 10 (or 30 percent hematocrit).  The Swiss journal Vox Sanquinis (March 1987) reported  that "65% of [anesthesiologists] required patients to have a perspective hemoglobin of 10 gm/dl for elective surgery.  

But at a 1988 conference on blood transfusion, Professor Howard L. Zauder asked,  "How Did We Get a 'Magic Number'?" He stated clearly:  "The etiology of the requirement that a patient have 10 grams of hemoglobin (Hgb) prior  to receiving an anesthetic is cloaked in tradition, shrouded in obscurity, and unsbubstantiated by clinical  or experimental evidence." Imagine many thousands of patients whose transfusions were triggered by an 'obscure, unsubstantiated requirement!  

Some might wonder, 'Why is a hemoglobin level of 14 normal if you can get by on much less?  Well, you thus have considerable reserve oxygen-carrying capacity so that you are ready for exercise or heavy work. Studies of anemic patients even reveal that "it is difficult to deficit in work capacity with hemoglobin concentrations  as low as 7g/dl. Others have found evidence of only moderately impaired function." -Contemporary Transfusion Practice, 1987.

Next time: HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?/Conclusion of: QUALITY ALTERNATIVES TO TRANSFUSION 

From the Watchtower magazine