Autologous Whole Blood Management for Transfusion Reduction in Adult Cardiac Surgery Patients

Cardiac surgery patients are at risk for perioperative bleeding and transfusion due to the invasiveness of the surgery and an acquired coagulopathy that is unique to this sub-specialty. High transfusion rates in this population are related to surgical field blood loss and the development of a multi-factorial coagulopathy. Due to these circumstances, cardiac surgery patients account for up to 20% of total annual blood transfusion with a subset of high risk patients consuming 80% of all transfusion in this group. On this basis, employing blood conservation methods is extremely relevant as the use of donated blood products leads to greater rates of infectious complications, atrial fibrillation, prolonged postoperative ventilation, acute renal injury, and reduced short and long-term survival in cardiac surgery patients. Reducing the health and cost burden associated with transfusion is an important outcome to both the patient and health care system. Intraoperative autologous whole blood transfusion, a blood-conservation method similar to acute normovolemic hemodilution, may reduce transfusion and its associated complications but there is a paucity of large scale prospective randomized control trials investigating its efficacy in the era of modern surgical approaches, targeted transfusion using point-of-care viscoelastic testing, and advanced perfusion techniques. The intent of this study is to assess the feasibility of a trial protocol for a large-scale national study investigating high volume autologous whole blood transfusion for reduction in allogenic transfusion, derivative administration, and transfusion-associated morbidity and mortality.