Multidisciplinary team training in postpartum hemorrhage: impact on the use of blood products

Compare the number of puerperal women submitted to blood transfusion before and after the implementation of a care protocol for postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) with multidisciplinary team training.

Cross-sectional study in a university hospital, analyzing births from 2015 to 2019, compared the use of blood products before and after the adoption of a PPH protocol with multidisciplinary training.

Between 2015 and 2019, there were 17,731 births, with 299 (1.7%) postpartum women receiving blood products and 278 postpartum women were considered for this analysis, 128 (0.7%) at Time 1 and 150 (0.8%) at Time 2. After the multiprofessional team training (T2), there was a difference in the complete use of the PPH protocol (use of oxytocin, misoprostol and tranexamic acid) (T1 = 5.1% x T2 = 49.5%, p≤0.0001). An individual categorized analysis revealed that, in the T2 period, there was lower use of blood component units per patient compared to T1 (Mann-Whitney, p=0.006). It should be noted that at T1 and T2, 54% and 24% respectively received two units of blood products. It is important to highlight that after the multidisciplinary team training for the PPH protocol, the goal of zero maternal death due to hemorrhage was reached.

The adoption of a specific protocol for PPH, combined with the training of a multidisciplinary team, had an impact on the ability to identify women at high risk of hemorrhage, resulting in a decrease in the use of blood components.