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Category Archives: Blood Management Best Practices
Ringing the “T.A.C.O.” Bell
Hats off and ring the bell for Dr. Alam et al. for their upcoming article “The prevention of transfusion-associated circulatory overload” in Transfusion Medicine Reviews, anticipated in print April, 2013! This review is outstanding as it guides us through the … Continue reading
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Is it Time for Goal Directed Management of Gastrointestinal Bleeding?
Gastrointestinal bleeding accounts for more than 450,000 hospitalizations annually in the United States and is a major consumer of blood products.1 Blood transfusions are given to 21- 43% of these patients, and acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding has a mortality rate … Continue reading
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The 8 Rights of Transfusion Administration
Nurses have known and upheld the five rights of medication administration for decades. The Transfusion Medicine community quickly and readily adapted these rights to another high volume, high risk hospital procedure: transfusion administration. Recently, the five medication administration rights have … Continue reading
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Some principles of pediatric blood management
We have all heard the phrase “it’s the principle of the thing.” This phrase reminds us that in everything we do, including the clinical management of patients, there are both precedents and principles to guide our decision making processes. The … Continue reading
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A Precarious Position
In July, webinar and the
Anemia Management in ESRD: On the Horns of a Dilemma
Recently, I have had several queries and personal communications regarding a perceived increase in RBC transfusions for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on dialysis. The literature is replete with articles surrounding the management of anemia in this patient population, … Continue reading
Who is truly ordering transfusions at your hospital?
As Blood Utilization Committees work to implement standardized transfusion order forms that encourage clinically appropriate transfusions, I am seeing that it is often nurses who are filling out the forms (whether on paper or electronically) after the physician writes the … Continue reading
To predonate or not to predonate, that is the question
Last’s week’s Journal of the American Medical Association included a clinical crossroads case study on autologous predonation (1). The scenario was a relatively healthy, non-anemic woman (“Mrs. C”) who was scheduled for elective knee replacement surgery and was asking for … Continue reading
Iron: It’s Not Just for Hemoglobin
Iron deficiency is common – very common. Estimates of the prevalence of iron deficiency in the U.S. vary depending on the age of the population studied and co-morbidities. In the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) iron deficiency … Continue reading
Untangling transfusion, patient safety, and biologic product deviations
by Dr. Carolyn Burns, Medical Director, Transfusion Services, Strategic Healthcare Group LLC The July supplement to Transfusion, the Journal of Blood Services Management, contains an excellent and quite provocative article surrounding the knowledge of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) … Continue reading
