Efficiency of blood utilization in elective surgical patients

Requesting blood prior to a surgical procedure for perioperative transfusion is a common practice in surgical patients. More unit of blood is requested than used by anticipating the patient will be transfused to provide a safety margin in an event of unexpected haemorrhage. Over requesting with minimal utilization results in significant wastage of blood, reagents and human resource. This study was conducted to assess blood utilization practice of the largest tertiary hospital in Ethiopia.

A cross-sectional prospective study method was used. Data was collected using a Proforma questionnaire by perusal of each individual patient's records from December 1, 2017 to February 28, 2018.patient age, sex, department requesting the blood, level of operating surgeon, hemodynamic status, number of unit requested, number of unit crossed matched and number of unit transfused were collected. Efficiency of blood utilization was calculated with three indices: Crossmatch to transfusion ratio, transfusion probability, and transfusion index indices.

Blood was requested for 406 patients and a total of 898 units were crossmatched for this patients. Overall Crossmatch to transfusion ration, transfusion probability and transfusion index were 7.6, 15.3% and 0.29 respectively. Results showed insignificant blood usage. Among different departments and units, better blood utilization was seen in neurosurgical unit with C/T ratio, TP and TI of 4.9, 24.4 and 0.6% respectively, while worst indices were from obstetrics unit with C/T ratio, TP and TI of 31.0, 6.5% and 0.06.

Using all the three parameters for evaluation of efficiency of blood utilization, the practice in our hospital shows ineffective blood utilization in elective surgical procedure. Blood requesting physician should order the minimum blood anticipated to be used as much as possible.