Successful implementation of a patient blood management programme in a lower middle-income state.

Background And Objectives: Transfusions are common, but their use is decreasing in some countries as a result of increased risk awareness and the implementation of patient blood management (PBM), an evidence-based approach to optimize patient outcomes. This study aimed to detail the implementation of PBM in a Brazilian state and its impact on transfusion rates and associated costs.

Materials And Methods: The PBM implementation involved several strategies: medical education, haematology consultation services, provision of intravenous iron and other medications, establishment of PBM and perioperative anaemia clinics, cell salvage and acute normovolaemic haemodilution, anaemia reference laboratories and rotational thromboelastometry.

Optical properties of organosilicon compounds containing sigma-electron delocalization by quasiparticle self-consistent GW calculations.

We investigate theoretically the electronic and optical absorption properties of two sub-classes of oligosilanes: (i) Si(CH), Si(CH), and Si(CH) that contain Si dot, ring and cage, respectively, and exhibit typical SiC and SiSi bonds; and (ii) persilastaffanes SiH(CH) and SiH(CH), which contain extended delocalized σ-electrons in SiSi bonds over three-dimensional Si frameworks. Our modeling is performed within the GW approach up to the partially self-consistent GW approximation, which is more adequate for reliably predicting the optical band gaps of materials. We examine how the optical properties of these organosilicon compounds depend on their size, geometric features, and Si/C composition.