[Transfusion trend in total hip arthroplasty following the implementation of a Patient Blood Management protocol.]

Total hip arthroplasty is a successful and safe surgical procedure, but it involves an associated blood loss. When this surgery is carried out on a scheduled basis, the implantation of a multimodal approach of Patient Blood Management (PBM) will significantly reduce transfusion needs.

To present the clinical-analytical results and the transfusion incidence after the implantation of a PBM protocol in those patients who are going to undergo prosthetic hip surgery.

Restrospective, unicentric, observational and analytical study, among those patients undergoing primary elective hip arthroplasty between January 2017 and February 2019. In all of them, a PBM protocol has been applied, focused on the development of an optimization program of preoperative anemia, the use of topical tranexamic acid and the adoption of a restrictive transfusion policy.

The study included a total of 384 patients, where only 9 required allogeneic blood transfusion (transfusion rate: 2.34%). In the analysis of transfused patients, they were found to have a longer hospital stay (8 ± 2.9 Vs 5.3 ± 2.9 days; p = 0.007) and a higher rate of complications (22.2% vs. 3, 9%; p = 0.017), with respect to those who avoided the TSA.

The application of an adequate multimodal protocol of PBM, brings us closer to the utopia of bloodless surgery in prosthetic surgery, resulting in a cost-effective model that significantly reduces the TSA in primary hip arthroplasty.