Stanford Medicine Mag - What’s behind the decline in blood transfusions?

[Melvinvines]

A reasonably interesting article from the secular medical community.

Click Here for Article - Against the flow What’s behind the decline in blood transfusions?

[trottigy]

Great article

The ATM-sized machine spun the blood to separate its components, cleaned it of any debris that had been suctioned up from the abdomen and sent it back out into fresh bags. From there, the blood was shunted right back to the patient’s body, through intravenous tubes poking into his veins. The cell salvage device has been around for decades, but only recently has evidence emerged that autotransfusion — giving patients their own blood instead of blood from donors — leads to better surgery outcomes. As a result, the use of the machines has gone from extremely rare to commonplace. Today, hospitals that have the machines use them in many scheduled abdominal and heart surgeries and routinely in trauma cases involving massive bleeding.“Autotransfusing this patient spared him from getting more banked donor blood and from all the risks associated with it,” says Maggio of the motorcycle crash victim. He turned out to have an injury to his spleen, which Maggio repaired. In all, around 2 liters of blood were collected from the patient’s abdomen, processed through the salvage device, and transfused back into his body. 

[LeslieDean]

If only 2 units was salvaged his count did not drop too low critical. Most hospitals use 300cc size bags/units for transfusion. Some still use 260cc size. Since you can roughly estimate the patients blood levels of hemoglobin and hematocrit being raised respectfully 1/3 points and grams and if he was healthy to start with his blood count did not drop critically. But that is the thing- you never know