Correlation between plasma or blood transfusion and survival after curative surgery for colorectal cancer

Out of 473 patients operated radically for colon or rectal cancer different survival curves have been calculated according to whether they had received or not blood or plasma transfusions during their hospital stay. The non-transfused patients have a better 5-year survival rate and the difference is statistically significant both including and not including Duke's C stage cases. Anemia on hospital admission, on the contrary, does not seem to influence patients survival. Immune depression after blood or plasma transfusion is a very well known phenomenon in transplant surgery and actually depends on the infusion of leucocytes. Is not yet clearly demonstrated that in cancer surgery immune depression may lead to a poorer survival of transfused patients but several papers, including ours, suggest that this effect is very likely. At present in cancer patients it is preferable to limit transfusions to the minimum. If they are absolutely necessary leucocyte poor or, better still, leucocyte free preparations should be administered.