Creating blood conservation for a cardiothoracic surgical hospital: when you have to start from scratch!

Background: This improvement report presents a hospital blood-management programme, a hospital-specific model that differs from patient blood managment and was aimed at improving operational standards of transfusion. We identified the challenges of the transfusion process and suggest practical strategies for improving them. The aim of this article was to investigate the effect of the programme on the transfusion of blood components.

Methods: In January 2019, the programme was started to improve the transfusion process. The data before and after the start of the programme were compared. Frequency distribution was obtained for each variable for statistical analysis and the chi-squared test with continuity correction was used to compare these variables for the years 2018 and 2019.

Results: Transfusion of total blood components decreased by 23.2%, fresh whole blood by 46.7%, fresh frozen plasma by 38.4%, pooled platelets by 14.0% and red blood cells by 9.66%. Autologous transfusion increased 11.7-fold. The emergency department (76.0%) and intensive care unit transfusion rate (9.26%) decreased significantly.

Conclusion: This programme is an example for hospitals where patient blood management cannot be applied. The programme can be considered the first step for blood management and may be applied to blood management in institutions worldwide. The difficulty of blood supply and increased cost will increase the importance of hospital blood-management programmes in the coming years.