Lives, money saved by protocol-guided transfusion use at cardiac surgery
Statewide implementation of a protocol for managing the intraoperative and postoperative use of blood products with cardiac surgery not only cut down on transfusion-related clinical risks, as would have been expected, it saved money . As a decision to use transfusions represents a trade-off between immediate benefit and certain inherent risks, the blood-product management plan put together by the Virginia Cardiac Surgery Quality Initiative (VCSQI) helped optimize the process and lowered the overall use of transfusions, cutting related mortality by half and saving about $50 million statewide over two years, reported Dr Damien J LaPar (University of Virginia, Charlottesville) here at the American Association of Thoracic Surgery 2012 Annual Meeting . As the assigned discussant following LaPar's presentation, Dr Edward D Verrier (University of Washington, Seattle) noted that the clinical gains from protocol management of such blood-pr