Medicine
Blood Conservation
Program
Although
often life-saving, blood transfusions are associated with
significant risk to the patient and rising costs to the blood
system and hospital. Transfusions are often given unnecessarily.
Blood conservation represents the use of alternatives to transfusion.
Blood
conservation measures used at Trillium and common to most
ONTraC (The Ontario Transfusion Coordinators) participants
is the self donation/autologous blood transfusion program
and the use of medication therapies to treat anaemia. Patients
are screened preoperatively (complete blood count) and offered
the most appropriate blood conservation measure. This initiative
allows us to maximize blood counts and therefore reduce/eliminate
the need for blood transfusions postoperatively.
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