The Medtronic Rethinking Blood Conservation Initiative is an evidence-based educational program that works with you to devise strategies and tactics to:
Help improve your patient outcomes
Reduce the length of ICU and hospital stays
Decrease post-operative morbidity
Minimize complications related to blood use
Reduce the financial burden of mismanaged blood and blood-use related complications
Address the problem of a dwindling blood supply
Multi-Modality Approach
The RBCSM Initiative advocates a multi-modality approach to blood conservation to reduce blood use-related complications and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) have published guidelines for the effective management and conservation of both transfused blood and blood perfused during arrested heart surgery. The recommendations made in the STS and the SCA guidelines range across the entire spectrum of blood use in thoracic surgical procedures, but they universally recommend a mulit-modality approach to blood conservation—one that incorporates medical, pharmacological and technological techniques. The guidelines and measures these organizations have undertaken illustrate the seriousness with which blood conservation and management are viewed within the health care community.
Mismanaged Blood and Patient Outcomes
Patients undergoing thoracic surgical procedures, particularly cardiovascular procedures, require considerable transfusions of blood. This is due not only to the amount of shed blood during surgery, but also to the trauma caused to red blood cells and to the dilution of the patient’s blood as it is perfused during arrested heart procedures.
Morbidities resulting from allogeneic blood transfusions and mismanaged blood include:
Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
Infections
Atrial fibrillation
Kidney and liver function complications
The Dwindling Blood Supply
Blood is among the most vital patient-care resources used today, but it is not an endless resource. Over the past 20 years, several factors have converged to turn blood use and blood conservation into matters that medical professionals must urgently address. Cardiac surgery is particularly vulnerable. Transfusions for cardiac surgery use about 20% of the United States’ blood supply.1 Patients transfused during elective CABG surgery had twicethe five-year mortality as those not transfused.
Learn more about how the RBCSM Initiative can help improve patient outcomes and reduce blood use-related complications.
Provides an overview of the issues driving the need for better blood conservation, the role of the new blood management guidelines, the impact of reporting and reimbursement and how the RBCSM Initiative can help you.
Provides background information on the guideline and its development, including descriptions of the ACC/AHA classifications scheme’s application to the guideline and recommendation listings
Practical worksheet for customer analysis of the measurement parameters associated with a blood management program
Yes! Please contact me so I can learn more about the benefits associated with blood conservation.
Speiss BD. Transfusion and outcome in heart surgery. Ann Thorac. Surg. 2002;74(4):986-7.
Engoren MC. Habib RH, Zacharias A, Schwann TA, Riordan CH, Durham SJ. Effect of blood transfusion on long-term survival after cardiac operation. Ann Thorac Surg. 2002; 74(4):1180-6.
