Preoperative autologous blood donation in placenta previa patients

The aim of this study was to evaluate the usability of preoperative autologous blood donation (PAD) in pregnant women with placenta previa.

We retrospectively reviewed 142 pregnancies with placenta previa from completed 32 weeks of gestation who underwent a caesarean delivery in University clinical centre Ljubljana, over a five-year period.

Although more than two thirds of pregnant women met the criteria for PAD, it was justified for approximately 13.6% of them. The decrease in haemoglobin level after PAD was only 4.5 ± 6.7 g/l on average and did not induce anaemia.

Although our study shows that PAD is not reasonable for the majority of all pregnant women with placenta previa who met the criteria for PAD from our study, we believe that with the implementation of Patient Blood Management it still has its prospects of clinical application. However, further prospective studies are needed to find risk factors for increased surgical bleeding to make a proper patient selection for PAD.