Blood Transfusion: Vintage Matters

Colleen Gorman Koch, MD, of the Anesthesiology Institute, led a study which found that heart surgery patients who receive transfusions with blood that has been stored more than 14 days are likelier to suffer complications and may face reduced short- and long-term survival. Dr. Koch notes that current blood-banking inventory management of providing the older red cell units first will not change until these results are confirmed with a randomized controlled trial. Cleveland Clinic departments of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia, Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (Eugene Blackstone, MD) and Laboratory Medicine and Clinical Pathology (Priscilla Figueroa, MD) have an on-going randomized controlled trial examining the relationship of red-cell storage-duration and patient outcomes in cardiac surgery.