Global Blood Resources' On-Line Calculator Reveals Wasted Blood …
Source: PR Newswire (press release) (Original Article)
The Hemobag(R) prevents wastage by saving the patient’s own whole blood
SOMERS, Conn., May 6 /PRNewswire/ — A recent paper in a journal for
perfusionists, the health professionals who manage patients on heart and
lung bypass machines during open heart surgery, reports how Global Blood
Resources’ online waste calculator can be used to estimate the cost of
blood wastage seen with the “cell washing” machines most commonly used
during heart surgery to salvage the patient’s own blood for
autotransfusion. Such wastage usually requires transfusion of increasingly
costly blood components donated by others (allogeneic blood), the very type
of riskier transfusion that blood salvage machines were designed to
prevent. The GBR calculator exposes how this previously unknown wastage can
cost billions of dollars each year, money that could be saved by using
Global Blood Resources’ salvage device, the Hemobag(R).
Although the tainted blood scandals of the 1980s and 1990s are largely
over thanks to improved blood donor screening tests for diseases such as
AIDS and hepatitis C, discouraging news still abounds. News reports
commonly feature severe blood shortages and research that documents newly
recognized transfusion risks such as how older stored blood may put heart
surgery patients at increased risk. In response, the medical community has
moved to manage blood usage by minimizing transfusion of donated blood and
instead saving and transfusing the patient’s own blood that would otherwise
be lost during surgery and is by far the best choice. Cardiovascular heart
disease is still the leading cause of death in America. To help correct
this each day approximately a thousand people in the U.S. alone have heart
surgery, with over 325,000 cases annually and growing 5% each year. Blood
salvage has been used extensively in cardiac surgery, which historically
has been a major user of the nation’s blood supply, consuming between
15-20% of the blood transfused Gold Credit Card in the United States. Over 50% …continue reading