A new article published in Spine examines trends in blood transfusions after spinal fusion in the United States over the past decade.
Researchers used the National Inpatient Sample to identify patients undergoing spinal fusion from 2000 to 2009 with ICD-9-CM codes. There was an increasing trend of allogeneic blood transfusion rate and decreasing predonated autologous blood transfusion rate.
The trends include:
• ALBT rate growth from 4.3 percent to 8 percent
• PR-ABT rate decline from 2.6 percent to 0.7 percent
• Overall blood transfusion and perioperative autologous blood transfusion rates remained stable from 2000 to 2009
• ALBT rate was high among pediatric and elderly patients, female patients and patients who underwent thoracolumbar, posterior and anterior and posterior fusion.
"The overall blood transfusion rate remained stable; however it may be reduced by using a patient blood management program, targeting the subgroups of patients with high ALBT rate," the authors concluded.
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