This is one for the medically inclined. From what I’ve heard and read (though the only reference I can think of is an episode of ER), it’s considered bad form to reintroduce a patient’s own blood lost during surgery. This autotransfusion is done only when there’s no usable blood in stock.
What I want to know is, why? If you can suction out the blood that the patient is losing, clean it up, and pump it back in, wouldn’t that be better than depleting the hospital’s supply? Surely, it isn’t the risk of blood-borne infection – you can’t infect yourself with your own blood, unless something gets into it between when it leaves you and when it comes back in. What, then, are the risks of autotransfusion?
I’m not sure about “bad form”, but I understand that the process of pumping and cleaning the blood damages it significantly, so I would imagine it’s not as beneficial as donated blood.
Who says autotransfusion is a bad thing? From what limited info I’ve read, autotrans generally refers to giving blood a few days before a surgery and then having it reintroduced during surgery. If you do it like this, it’s safer than any other transfusion… it’s YOUR blood, after all.
But reusing blood that leaked out during a surgery, the most obvious risk I can see is infection.
I had major surgery (9.5 hours worth) ten years ago in 1991, and they re-used my own blood. I recall that there was a $2000 charge on the hospital bill for cleaning and re-tubing the equipment that recovered lost blood during surgery. I didn’t donate my own blood beforehand, they just re-used the blood lost during surgery.
Maybe the expense of cleaning up is the problem with it.
I am certainly no expert on autotransfusion. However, I have a little experience with it from my work as an orthopedic nurse. My post surgical patients, particularly those who had hip or knee surgery, often came back to us with a special drain that collected the blood they lost after surgery and allowed us to reinfuse it. The drain contained a filter to remove clots and was a closed, sterile system; the drain had a bag attached so that blood could be emptied from the drain, hung on an IV, and reinfused without ever exposing it to outside pathogens. Reinfusion drains were always considered a good thing by the people I worked with, because they often saved the patient from receiving someone else’s blood a few days later. This was especially helpful in the case of someone who refused other types of blood products, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That said, let me reiterate that I am not an expert. Maybe one of our MD friends will come along soon and give a better answer.
Intraoperative blood salvage is done routinely on major surgeries at the hospital where I work using a piece of equipment called a cell saver. Basically it collects blood lost during surgery, washes it and reinfuses it to the patient (it is essentially a closed system). This is a huge help during vascular surgeries such as aneurysm repair. I am not aware of any signigicant problems with its use. It has greatly reduced the amount of donor blood needed for such procedures which is wonderful as we usually have a pretty limited supply due to the increase in transplants, etc. as medical technology has progressed.