Quality Alternatives to Transfusions -SURGERY, YES-BUT WITHOUT TRANSFUSIONS

Many people today will not accept blood.  For health reasons, they are requesting what Witnesses seek primarily on religious grounds; quality medical care employing alternative non-blood management.  As we have noted, major surgery  is still possible.  If you have any lingering doubts, some other evidence from medical literature may dispel them.

Little children too?  "Forty-eight pediatric open heart surgical  procedures were performed with bloodless techniques regardless of surgical complexity."  The children were as small as 10.3 pounds (4.7 kg)  "Because of consistent success in Jehovah's Witnesses and the fact that blood transfusion carries a risk of serious complications, we are currently performing most of our pediatric cardiac operations without transfusion." -Circulation, September 1984.

The article "Quadruple Major Joint Replacement in Member of Jehovah's Witnesses"  (Orthopaedic Review, August 19 86) Told of an anemic patient with "advanced destruction in both knees and hips.  "Iron dextran was employed before and after the staged surgery, which was successful.  The British Journal of Anaesthesia (1983) reported on a52-year old Witness with a hemoglobin level under 10.  With the use of hypotensive anesthesia to minimize blood loss, she had a total hip and shoulder replacement.  A surgical team at the University of Arkansas (U.S.A.)   also used this method in a hundred hip replacements on Witnesses, and all the patients recovered.  The professor heading the department comments:  "What we have learned from (Witness) patients, we now apply to all our patients that we do total hips on."

Professor Dr. V. Schlosser, of the surgical hospital at the University of Freiburg (German), noted: "Among this group of patients, the incidence of bleeding during the preoperative period was not higher; the complications were, if anything, fewer.  The special view of illness, typical of Jehovah's Witnesses, had a positive influence in the preoperative process." - Herz Kreislauf, August 1987. 

Witnesses do not accept transfusions of whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets, or blood plasma.  As to minor fractions, such as immune globulin, see the Watchtower of [June 15, 2000, pages 29-31]. 

The Watchtower of [October 15, 2000], pages 30-1, considers Bible principles that bear on methods of blood salvage on blood-circulating (extracorporeal) equipment. 

Next time: You Have the Right to Choose

From the jw.org publications