Blood transfusion practices in surgery: an approach to intrahospital analysis

This study presents a two-year experience with the use of methods for the intrahospital analysis of surgical blood transfusion practices. Statistical and graphic methods were used to classify 21 types of operations (comprising 2,261 surgical procedures) by patterns of blood requests and usage. Surgical procedures were separated into three groups based on the frequency of transfusion. The results show that for many procedures careful attention to preoperative diagnoses can be very useful in predicting the amount of blood needed for a given surgical procedure. Methods described in this paper could be very helpful in reducing excess labor and preventing the unnecessary blood wastage which can result from improper ordering of blood for surgical procedures.