The results suggest cell salvage is efficacious in reducing the need for allogeneic red cell transfusion in adult elective cardiac and orthopaedic surgery. The use of cell salvage did not appear to impact adversely on clinical outcomes. However, the methodological quality of trials was poor. As the trials were unblinded and lacked adequate concealment of treatment allocation, transfusion practices may have been influenced by knowledge of the patients' treatment status potentially biasing the results in favour of cell salvage.
Autotransfusion following cardiac operations: a randomized, prospective study.
To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the collection and retransfusion of postoperatively shed mediastinal blood as part of a multifaceted approach to blood conservation following cardiac operation, 113 patients were randomized into either an autotransfusion group (54 patients) or a control group (59 patients). Intraoperative and postoperative hemodilution was practiced in all patients. The clinical safety of this technique was confirmed by the lack of septic, hematological, pulmonary, renal, or hepatic complications. However, in this setting where blood conservation is already aggressively practiced, the ability of the technique to further reduce the use of banked blood following cardiac surgical procedures was not demonstrated.