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- Published on: 5 June 2019
- Published on: 5 June 2019Author response to 'Blood Transfusions: time for a change in practice?'
We read and agreed with several points in the editorial [1] that accompanied our main research paper about UK clinicians' views on blood transfusion practice [2]. We have additional responses to the editorial.
We recognise the lack of evidence about red cell transfusion within palliative care, which is why we undertook the largest audit of transfusion practice to date [3]. We analysed 465 transfusion episodes over 3 months from 121 UK hospices. Patients were not usually investigated for the anaemia. Of those that were, a significant proportion would have benefited from B12, folate or iron supplements, although rarely used. Despite being at higher risk of transfusion-associated circulatory overload (TACO), risk-mitigation practices like weighing patients or restricting transfusion to one unit (before review), were only undertaken in 15% of patients. In terms of patient benefit only 83 (18%) had improvement maintained at 30 days; 142 (31%) <14 days, and 50 (11%) had none. 150 patients (32%) were dead at 30 days, over double the predicted number.
While documented death rates and major morbidity from red cell transfusion are low in the general population, there is growing evidence of under recognition and under reporting. A study across 157 UK hospitals showed that 4.3% of inpatients >60 years had increasing respiratory distress post-transfusion, but only one-third diagnosed with TACO by the hospital were reported to the SHOT Haemovigilance Group [...
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None declared.