Related Experiment Videos
How to obtain hemostasis after aortic surgery
1Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Lahey Hitchcock Clinic, Burlington, Massachusetts 01805, USA.
Background:
The establishment of hemostasis without the excessive transfusion of homologous blood and blood products is critical to successful aortic surgery.
Methods And Results:
By using preoperative autologous blood donation and intraoperative blood conservation measures, 85% of patients can undergo aortic surgical procedures without homologous blood or product transfusions, and almost three-quarters of patients will still not have required homologous transfusions by the time of discharge. In contrast, three-quarters of those patients who cannot donate blood preoperatively will require homologous blood transfusions.
Conclusions:
The strategy described is safe: our overall survival rate for 204 patients has been 98%, with a 1% incidence of stroke.