Roads travelled: The journey to Patient Blood Management at 35 years.

Patient Blood Management evolved in recent years, focusing on the haematopoietic system as relevant to all disciplines of medicine. The allogeneic blood supply chain travels from donation, to fractionation, preservation, and storage, to therapeutic, established treatments, or prophylactics for a wide range of medical conditions. This supply chain 'connects' altruistic blood donors to patients in need, symbolising a 'gift relationship', emphasising the empathetic bond between donor and recipient.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish: the challenges of preoperative anaemia management.

The timely correction of anaemia before major surgery is important for optimising perioperative patient outcomes. However, multiple barriers have precluded the global expansion of preoperative anaemia treatment programmes, including misconceptions about the true cost/benefit ratio for patient care and health system economics. Institutional investment and buy-in from stakeholders could lead to significant cost savings through avoided complications of anaemia and red blood cell transfusions, and through containment of direct and variable costs of blood bank laboratories.

Patient Blood Management: Improving Outcomes for Millions While Saving Billions. What Is Holding It Up?

Patient blood management (PBM) offers significantly improved outcomes for almost all medical and surgical patient populations, pregnant women, and individuals with micronutrient deficiencies, anemia, or bleeding. It holds enormous financial benefits for hospitals and payers, improves performance of health care providers, and supports public authorities to improve population health. Despite this extraordinary combination of benefits, PBM has hardly been noticed in the world of health care.

Patients' Choice, Consent, and Ethics in Patient Blood Management.

The goal of patient blood management (PBM) is to optimize clinical outcomes for individual patients by managing their blood as a precious and unique resource to be safeguarded and managed judiciously. A corollary to successful PBM is the minimization or avoidance of blood transfusion and stewardship of donated blood. The first is achieved by a multidisciplinary approach with personalized management plans shared and decided on with the patient or their substitute.

Reflections on pandemics and the 60th anniversary of the University of New South Wales Medical School.

In March 1961 the University of New South Wales enrolled the first students into the new faculty of medicine that is now ranked 4th in Australia and 59th in the world. The author was fortunate to be a member of that pioneering group and looks back in gratitude to all the visionary and committed academics and mentors, who made this happen. Many of the foundation academics were fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, with two becoming University of New South Wales deans of medicine.

Physician autonomy and patient rights: lessons from an enforced blood transfusion and the role of patient blood management.

This article provides an ethical and medico-legal analysis of ruling no. 465 of 30 May 2018 issued by the Court of Termini Imerese (Palermo) and confirmed on appeal on 11 November 2020, which, in the absence of similar historical precedents in Europe, convicted a medical doctor of a crime of violent assault for having ordered the administration of a blood transfusion to a patient specifically declining blood transfusion on religious grounds. We analyse the Court's decision regarding the identification of assault in performing the blood transfusion and its decision not to accept exculpatory urgent 'necessity' as a defence.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses comparing mortality in restrictive and liberal haemoglobin thresholds for red cell transfusion: an overview of systematic reviews.

Background: There are no overviews of systematic reviews investigating haemoglobin thresholds for transfusion. This is important as the literature on transfusion thresholds has grown considerably in recent years. Our aim was to synthesise evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the effects of restrictive and liberal transfusion strategies on mortality.

Essential Role of Patient Blood Management in a Pandemic: A Call for Action.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pandemic. Global health care now faces unprecedented challenges with widespread and rapid human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and high morbidity and mortality with COVID-19 worldwide. Across the world, medical care is hampered by a critical shortage of not only hand sanitizers, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and hospital beds, but also impediments to the blood supply.

Channelling medical truths from Sir William Osler.

Dr James L. T. Isbister (JLT), a graduate of the University of Adelaide, came to Sydney as a clinical pathologist at Sydney Hospital in 1897 and subsequently was a general practitioner in North Sydney and honorary surgeon and gynaecologist at Royal North Shore Hospital from 1900.

Age of blood and adverse outcomes in a maternity population.

Background: In recent times there has been debate around whether longer storage time of blood is associated with increased rates of adverse outcomes after transfusion. It is unclear whether results focused on cardiac or critically ill patients apply to a maternity population. This study investigates whether older blood is associated with increased morbidity and readmission in women undergoing obstetric transfusion.

Red cell and platelet transfusions in neonates: a population-based study.

Objectives: This study aimed to describe the use of red cells, platelets and exchange transfusions among all neonates in a population cohort, to examine trends in transfusion over time and to determine transfusion rates in at-risk neonates.

Design: Linked population-based birth and hospital data from New South Wales (NSW), Australia, were used to determine rates of blood product transfusion in the first 28 days of life. The study included all live births ≥23 weeks' gestation in NSW between 2001 and 2011.

Blood transfusion during pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period.

Objectives: To identify risk factors for transfusion and trends in transfusion rates across pregnancy and the postnatal period.

Methods: Linked hospital and birth data on all births in hospitals in New South Wales, Australia, between 2001 and 2010 were used to identify blood transfusions for women during pregnancy, at birth, and in the 6 weeks postpartum. Poisson regression was used to identify risk factors for red cell transfusion in the birth admission.

The three-pillar matrix of patient blood management--an overview.

Allogeneic blood transfusion has had a central role in the development and practice of numerous medical and surgical advances. In recent years, transfusion has no longer been regarded as essential for the management of a wide range of diseases and most uncomplicated elective surgeries in well-prepared patients should now be conducted without the use of transfusions. With the exception of chronic haematopoietic deficiencies, the 'transplantation' of allogeneic blood is usually supportive therapy and is generally only required in relationship to complicated major surgery, trauma and until the basic disease processes can be corrected.

Use of recombinant activated factor VII in Jehovah's Witness patients with critical bleeding.

Introduction: The Australian and New Zealand Haemostasis Registry (ANZHR) included patients who received off-licence recombinant activated factor VII (rFVIIa) for critical bleeding from 2000 to 2009. Approximately 1.3% of the ANZHR patients were Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs).

Adverse blood transfusion outcomes: establishing causation.

The transfusion of allogeneic red blood cells (RBCs) and other blood components is ingrained in modern medical practice. The rationale for administering transfusions is based on key assumptions that efficacy is established and risks are acceptable and minimized. Despite the cliché that, "the blood supply is safer than ever," data about risks and lack of efficacy of RBC transfusions in several clinical settings have steadily accumulated.

Decision making in perioperative transfusion.

Clinical decision making in transfusion medicine has received greater attention in recent years driven by concern about the potential hazards, especially since the recognition that HIV can be transmitted by homologous blood transfusion. These concerns about the risks of homologous transfusion has precipitated interest in the appropriateness of many transfusions and in the decision making processes in transfusion medicine. There has been increasing expenditure on the blood supply side to address the real or perceived potential infectious hazards.