Mechanisms behind operating room blood transfusions in coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients with insignificant bleeding.

摘要

OBJECTIVE: To investigate situations in cardiac surgery when transfusions are sometimes used for indications other than to compensate for surgical bleeding. DESIGN: Retrospective study. SETTING: Cardiac surgery unit at a university teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft surgery (n = 2,469). INTERVENTIONS: A subgroup of patients with surgical bleeding of 400 mL triggered transfusion. At less than this bleeding volume, other indications were noted: unstable angina, use of blood cardioplegia, and bad surgical outcome, such as inotropic support. After exclusion of these predictors and anemic patients, the strongest predictors were female gender (p < 0.001), weight /=90 minutes (p = 0.002), CPB cooling