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. 1990 Jun;83(6):368–370. doi: 10.1177/014107689008300610

Blood ordering habits for elective surgery: time for change.

T Juma 1, A Baraka 1, M Abu-Lisan 1, S K Asfar 1
PMCID: PMC1292686  PMID: 2380966

Abstract

A prospective study was carried out for 6 months to determine the efficacy of blood ordering routines for elective surgery. It was found that only 23% of procedures needed preoperative crossmatching of blood (transfusion index 'TI' greater than 0.5). There was an excessive over-ordering of blood for 77% of the operations (crossmatch/transfusion ratio greater than 2.5). In addition, the transfusion index for the latter group showed that there was no need to prepare blood preoperatively (TI less than 0.5). A transfusion tariff is worked out which abandons crossmatching for the majority of procedures (cholecystectomy, thyroidectomy and surgery for duodenal ulcer excluding gastrectomy). Instead a 'group and screen' policy is suggested.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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