The Growing Demand for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery “All those dealing with blood and caring for surgical patients have to consider bloodless surgery.”—Dr. Joachim Boldt, professor of anesthesiology, Ludwigshafen, Germany. THE tragedy of AIDS has compelled scientists and physicians to take additional steps to make the operating room a safer place. Obviously, this has meant more stringent blood screening. But experts say that even these measures do not ensure zero-risk transfusions. “Even as society expends great resources on making the blood supply safer than ever,” says the magazine Transfusion, “we believe patients will still try to avoid allogeneic [donor] transfusions simply because the blood supply can never be completely safe.” Not surprisingly, many doctors are p. 8becoming wary of administering blood. “Blood transfusions are basically no good, and we are very aggressive in avoiding them for everybody,” says Dr. Alex Zapolanski, of San Francisco, California. The general public too is becoming aware of the dangers of transfusions. Indeed, a 1996 poll revealed that 89 percent of Canadians would prefer an alternative to donated blood. “Not all patients will refuse homologous transfusions as do Jehovah’s Witnesses,” states the Journal of Vascular Surgery. “Nonetheless, the risks of disease transmission and immunomodulation offer clear evidence that we must find alternatives for all of our patients.” A Preferred Method Thankfully, there is an alternative—bloodless medicine and surgery. Many patients view it not as a last resort but as a preferred treatment, and with good reason. Stephen Geoffrey Pollard, a British consultant surgeon, notes that the morbidity and mortality rates among those who receive bloodless surgery are “at least as good as those patients who receive blood, and in many cases they are spared the postoperative infections and complications often attributable to blood.” How did bloodless medical treatment develop? In one sense the question is rather odd, since bloodless medicine actually predates the use of blood. Indeed, it was not until the
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:03:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015