Editorial: Optimizing red blood cell transfusion therapy in the 21st century: The power of data analysis for past understanding and future guidance

摘要

The optimal use of transfusion therapy is often the subject of ongoing debate in the scientific and lay media. It has recently been stated that "Treatments used in transfusion medicine (TM) are among the most widely used in clinical practice, but are among the least well studied."3 Some have suggested that 25% to 40% or even more of red blood cell (RBC) transfusions administered in the United States might be medically unnecessary,45 and transfusion has been identified by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as the most commonly performed procedure in hospitalized patients since at least 2003.6 In 2009, blood transfusion occurred in more than 10% of hospital stays that included a procedure.7 The potential pervasiveness of overtransfusion and/or wasteful transfusion was recently highlighted by the American Medical Association and The Joint Commission.8 Despite this, transfusion therapy is estimated by some to have saved over one billion lives worldwide since the middle of the 20th century and, by one taxonomy, is thought to represent the single greatest achievement in medical care throughout history.