A new blood conservation technique could reduce the need for transfusions in heart surgery, according to the University of Oklahoma.

A recent study from the University of Oklahoma, published in the journal JAMA Surgery , suggests that the acute normovolemic hemodilution (ANH) technique could reduce the need for blood transfusions in cardiac surgery.

This technique, which involves extracting blood from a patient before undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass and reinfusing it at the end of the procedure, remains underutilized in the United States, with only 14.7% of cases implementing it.

The study revealed that HNA can reduce the likelihood of a transfusion by 27%. This reduction in blood use could generate significant benefits, both in terms of patient safety and cost reduction in surgical procedures. According to the researchers, this technique not only optimizes resources but could also improve postoperative outcomes for patients.

Cardiac surgery is one of the most common interventions worldwide, with more than one million procedures performed annually. In high-income countries, such as the United States, cardiac surgery remains the leading cause of blood product consumption, with 30% to 50% of patients requiring red blood cell transfusions.

The study's senior author, Dr. Kenichi Tanaka, professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, said he hopes the results of this study will stimulate renewed debate about the validity of HNA in the United States.

Although a recent international study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that HNA does not reduce the need for transfusions, Tanaka notes that less than 5% of the participants were Americans, making the results not fully applicable to the American population, whose patients have different clinical characteristics.

"We know that patients who receive HNA have similar survival rates and length of stay as those who receive transfusions, but we believe that by performing HNA, we are improving resource utilization," Tanaka explained.

The researcher added that this technique is particularly useful when a patient experiences bleeding during surgery and needs to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), which entails greater resource consumption and additional costs.

In addition to the decreased need for transfusions, the study found that platelet use was also lower in the HNA group. This finding is significant, as platelets stored for several days in blood banks lose their functionality. According to Tanaka, preserving a patient's platelets through HNA could be a significant advantage, especially considering that many heart surgery patients take aspirin before surgery, which affects platelet function.

The retrospective study analyzed data from 16,795 patients from 52 centers in the United States. Of these, 2,463 patients (14.7%) underwent HNA.

Although the research yielded promising results, one of the study's limitations was the lack of a standardized protocol for applying the technique, which made it difficult to determine exactly how much blood was extracted or what solution was administered to maintain normal blood volume during the procedure.

Tanaka stated that he will continue to use HNA in his clinical practice and hopes more centers will adopt this technique. He also mentioned that future research could explore combining HNA with clotting factor concentrates, which could offer even greater benefits in reducing blood transfusions.

*This content was rewritten with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on information published by Europa Press, and reviewed by the journalist and an editor.