Estimation of blood loss in oral and maxillofacial surgery

Abstract

Oral and maxillofacial surgeries are associated with excessive blood loss owing to the vascular richness of this region. Accurate estimation of blood loss using a reliable clinical method shall guide the surgeons towards appropriate blood requisition and usage. This article reviews methods of blood loss estimation that could be used to measure blood loss during oral and maxillofacial surgery procedures. PubMed, Google Scholar and CINAHL databases were searched without a date limit. The phrases ‘estimation of blood loss’ and ‘blood loss in surgical procedures’ were used to search for articles estimating blood loss during surgeries. A total of 57 publications were searched and only 28 of them describing methods that could be used during oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures were included in this review. Different methods of blood loss estimation have been described. This review revealed scanty data on blood loss estimation during oral and maxillofacial surgeries. The available published articles are mostly estimations during obstetric and gynaecological operations. A combination of gravimetric and volumetric methods is the most common method used for the estimation of blood loss in oral maxillofacial surgery procedures. A combination of gravimetric and volumetric methods of blood loss estimation was found to be the most common method of blood loss estimation in oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures as opposed to other surgical specialities. Other methods such as colorimetric and mathematical methods may be more accurate but are not frequently used for routine clinical use likely due to the technicalities surrounding their use.