Slashdot Mirror
Bloodless Surgery
isaacbowman writes "Dr. Charles Bridges, a Pennsylvania Hospital cardiologist, says says regarding new bloodless surgery options - "Among the benefits are reductions in recovery time, hospital stay, cost and complications -- as well as an estimated $20,000 in savings per patient." Advances in medicine have made this possible and Dr. Bridges also says, "There's no downside to it that we can see, and there's certainly no downside that's been documented." Dr. Patricia Ford, director of Pennsylvania Hospital's Center for Bloodless Medicine & Surgery, further states, why blood transfusions are dangerous, saying that they are "like getting a transplant; they can be risky and should be a last resort.""
As a surgical resident I found most of the article pretty good, but the last line that a blood transfusion was the same as a transplant much have been taken out of context. I have take care of nearly 100 transplant patients during my residnecy and they are by far the most labor intensive petients in the hospital. They are chronically immune suppressed, often on the verge of liver and/or kidne failure, and generally coming in erey year or so with rejection issues.
On the other hand I have taken care of hundreds of patients who have had blood transfusions. While not harmless, a blood transfusion has a miniscule risk of infection (from potential pathogens we are not aware of or cannot test for) or reaction. Only two of my patients have had transfusion reactions which requires stopping the transfusion, some medication, and maybe two extra hospital days. These patients did not need long term immune supression or chronic doses of borderline toxic medications as a result of the transfusion.
Just my little nit pick with the article.
---sam
If you really want to investigate why bloodless surgery is gaining ground in the medical industry then take a look at this article published by Jehovah's Witnesses. And before you turn up your nose because of the source of the article, you should really give it a read. The JW's have had a major impact on how the medical industry views this topic and many advances have been made because of them. Here's the article: http://www.watchtower.org/library/hb/index.htm?art icle=article_06.htm
TheTiminator
I think it's brilliant that they're starting to use suctioned blood to resupply the patient. This is, more or less, perfectly good blood. It may need to be mixed with some anticoagulants, but otherwise it's got to be better than transfused blood. It's fresh and still plenty capable of carrying a full load of oxygen.
I'm planning on applying to med school in the next couple of years with the goal of going into surgery, so seeing an article like this on Slashdot is nice. The advancements in medicine over just the last decade have been incredible and I see no end to it. I'm looking forward to how much more it will advance by the time I'm in residency.
You are thinking too deeply, their point was simply whenever possible one should avoid inserting things into the body that are foriegn, either other peoples blood or even your own blood that has been stored.
It also avoids potential problems like this. (synopsis: Red Cross Canada pleads guilty to killing over 3,000 people due to distributing tainted blood; 1000 contracted HIV, 20,000 hep-c). The less foreign substances you put in your body, the better, besides the fact that stored blood isn't nearly as effective as your own natural blood at carrying oxygen.