Blood Transfusion Practice in Operating Rooms in Nemazee Hospital in Southern Iran

The requests for blood products in elective surgeries exceed actual use, leading to financial wastage and loss of shelf-life. In this study, we assessed the blood transfusion indices in elective surgeries performed in the operating rooms.

In this cross-sectional study, from January to June 2017, a total of 970 adult patients who underwent elective surgeries in the operating rooms of Nemazee hospital, a general referral hospital in southern Iran, were investigated. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory data, such as hemoglobin (Hb), hematocrit (Hct), platelets, prothrombin time (PT), and partial thromboplastin time (PTT) were gathered from medical records. Blood utilization was evaluated using the following indices: cross-match to transfusion ratio (C/T ratio), transfusion probability (T%), transfusion index (TI), and Maximum Surgical Blood Order Schedule (MSBOS).

The overall C/T, T%, and TI ratios were 2.49, 46.6%, and 0.83 for all procedures, and the highest and lowest ratios pertained to the thoracic and cardiac surgeries, respectively. The C/T ratio was ≥2.5 for all surgical procedures except for cardiac surgeries. T% was <30 for thoracic and orthopedics surgeries and ≥30 for other surgical procedures. In all surgical procedures, TI was less than 0.5, except for cardiac surgeries. Also, the MSBOS was about 3 units for cardiac surgeries and ranged from 0.5 to 1 units in other surgeries.

The results of this study showed a high quality blood transfusion practice in cardiac surgeries, possibly due to more focus on this critical ward. Assessing difficulties in the process of reservation, utilization, and preparation of standard protocols and policies are required to improve the blood utilization practice in operating rooms.