Error traps in Pediatric Patient Blood Management in the Perioperative Period

Patient blood management is a patient-centered evidence-based approach to improve patient outcomes by harnessing the patient's own hematopoietic system to optimize blood health while promoting patient safety and empowerment. Perioperative patient blood management is a standard of care in adult medicine, yet it is not commonly accepted in pediatrics. Raising awareness may be the first step in improving perioperative care for the anemic and/or bleeding child. This article highlights five preventable perioperative blood conservation error traps for children. The goal is to provide practical clinical guidance to improve preoperative diagnosis and treatment of anemia, facilitate recognition and treatment of massive hemorrhage, reduce unnecessary allogeneic blood transfusions, and decrease associated complications of anemia and blood component transfusions utilizing a patient/family-centered informed consent and shared decision-making approach.