Patient blood management and transfusion.

摘要

To the Editor:-We have read with great interest both the editorial by Spahn et al, and the article by Atzil et al. in the December issue of Anesthesiology. We fully agree with the argumentation, but we want to go further into this debate. The very well designed animal study of Atzil et al. is very interesting, expressing the independent role of blood transfusion in cancer progression and, more precisely, the role of aged erythrocytes more than leukocytes. The editorial of Spahn et al} related to this article summarizes brilliantly the numerous disadvantages of homologous blood transfusion.