ThP5.6 - Intraoperative blood transfusion and postoperative infective complications in patients who undergo pancreatoduodenectomy for malignancy

Abstract Background Prior authors have suggested that patients who receive an intraoperative blood transfusion (IOBT) are at increased risk of postoperative infective complications (transfusion-related immunomodulation). This study aimed to investigate whether pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) patients who received IOBT were more likely to develop an infective complication than those who did not. Methods Data was extracted from the Recurrence After Whipple’s (RAW) study, a multicentre retrospective cohort study of outcomes of PD performed for pancreatic head malignancy (29 centres from 8 countries, n=1484). Patients who received IOBT were identified and compared to those who did not. The primary outcome measure was the development of at least one postoperative infective complication, including: hospital acquired pneumonia, cholangitis, Clostridium difficile, intra-abdominal collection, liver abscess, sepsis of unknown origin, surgical site infection and urinary tract infection. The Mann-Whitney U test and Fisher exact test were used for statistical analysis. Results Blood transfusion data was available from 907 patients (61.1%). In total, 165 patients (18.1%) received IOBT. The median number of units given was two (range: 1-36, interquartile range (IQR): 1). Patients who received IOBT were similar to those who did not in terms of median age (68 vs 67 years, p=0.5), median BMI (23.8 vs 25.3 kg/m2, p=0.0001) and ASA grade (33.3% vs 34.5% grade >II, p=0.8). These patients also had similar rates of preoperative diabetes (24.8% vs 20.9%, p=0.3), cardiac (41.2% vs 45.9%, p=0.3) and respiratory disease (7.9% vs 12.1%, p=0.01) compared to patients without IOBT. Transfused patients experienced more infective complications but this was not statistically significant (24.2% vs 17.6%, p=0.06). Conclusion In our multicentre study, there was a trend amongst patients undergoing PD who received IOBT to develop more infective complications. Blood transfusions should only be given when strictly indicated.