Effectiveness of Cell Salvage for Minimising Intra Operative and Postoperative Allogenic Blood Transfusion in Patients undergoing Aortic Aneurysmal Surgeries

Background: The need for blood transfusion is indispensable to any major surgical procedures. Patients undergoing open surgical repair of aortic aneurysm and dissection have high bleeding risk. There has been a great concern due to increasing awareness of adverse effects of allogeneic blood transfusion. Cell Salvage and Acute normovolemic hemodilution (ANH) has been proposed as an alternative to allogenic blood transfusion. Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of cell salvage for minimizing intraoperative and postoperative allogenic blood transfusion in patients undergoing aortic aneurysmal surgeries. Study Design: A prospective retrospective observational study. Participants: 54 patients undergoing aortic aneurysmal surgeries. Methods: Patients were divided into two groups . Group 1: Cell saver group (CS group) included all the patients, prospective as well as retrospective, undergoing/ has undergone aortic aneurysmal surgery in whom cell saver was used. Group 2: Control group (group C) included those patients who have undergone aortic aneurysmal surgery in whom cell saver was not used. Allogenic blood transfusion was given if Hb was <7gm% during intra operative and post-operative period. Patients were followed in post-operative period for 24 hours and requirement of blood transfusion was recorded in each patient and same data was collected from retrospective subjects. Results: We observed that there was significantly decreased need for allogenic blood transfusion in cell saver group both intraoperatively as well as in immediate postoperative period. It was also observed that the total number of blood units transfused were significantly higher in control group in comparison to cell saver group. Conclusion: It was concluded that the use of cell saver in repair of aortic aneurysm surgeries was beneficial for patients and decreased the need for allogenic blood transfusion and hence should be incorporated in these surgeries wherever feasible.