Effects of patient blood management in pediatric heart surgery

Multidisciplinary patient blood management practices reduce costs of blood products and transfusion-related complications in hospitals. Hospital costs are high in pediatric cardiac surgery patients because high hematocrit levels are usually needed; the need for blood products is high due to complex and long surgical procedures; the length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) is long, and the use of treatment modalities such as dialysis and ECMO is common in this patient population.

In this retrospective study, we investigated the effects of the use of the multidisciplinary patient blood management protocols on the use of blood products and associated costs by comparing the outcomes of the protocol implemented in the year 2019 to the blood product use and costs of the previous year. In our clinic, 414 patients were operated on in 2019; 230 of them were males and 184 of them were females.

Transfusions carried out in adherence to such protocols have reduced mortality rates along with a decline in hospital costs.

We, too, achieved a 10% reduction in blood product costs per patient after the implementation of the multidisciplinary patient blood management protocol.