Transfusion medicine and surgery.

Mortality after surgery in patients with severe and progressive anemia is an entity': risks related to blood loss and insufficient oxygen delivery to tissues are still a major concern in surgery. Risks of blood transfusion parallel those of blood loss: blood-borne infectious diseases and immunological side effects' may frustrate therapeutic efforts of surgery. Thus, blood transfusion in surgery must be kept to a level in which both risks are reduced to a minimum (or theoretically even absent). This review will deal with two relevant questions: (a) how to define the lowest amount of blood tranifusion needed for sur8ery and (b) how to reduce or abolish post-tranifusion risks of this amount.