Impact of autologous blood transfusion on the use of pack of red blood cells in coronary artery bypass grafting surgery.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of Cell Saver autologous blood transfusion system (CS) on the use of packed red blood cells (pRBC) in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery.

Methods: We carried out a retrospective cross-sectional study in 87 patients undergoing primary elective CABG with miniaturized cardiopulmonary bypass (miniCPB), divided in two groups: 44 without-CS and 43 with-CS. We investigated the necessity of absolute use and the volume of packed red blood cells (pRBC) in each group, as well as cardiovascular risk factors, presurgical variables and intraoperative surgical parameters.