Photo by Elise Amendola
Blood for transfusion
The European Commission (EC) has published guides intended to help hospitals and national authorities implement patient blood management (PBM) programs throughout the European Union.
The EC said its guide for hospitals is intended to help them implement PBM in a practical way, building on already recognized best practices.
The guide is the result of the combined expertise of clinicians and PBM professionals and the experience gathered from a 30-month pilot program implementing PBM in 5 European teaching hospitals.
The EC said this guide is relevant for all medical professionals and organizations involved in caring for patients suffering from anemia, blood loss, and medical conditions that might require transfusion.
The EC’s other PBM guide is intended for national authorities. It lists 10 “essential public health operations,” which encompass a range of activities authorities can engage in to aid the implementation of PBM in their health systems.
The essential public health operations (and examples of activities) are:
- Surveillance—eg, continuously collect patient-level data on anemia, transfusion, and outcomes to measure and guide the implementation of PBM as a standard of care
- Monitoring—eg, recommend the monitoring and flagging of too liberal blood component utilization to prevent health hazards
- Health protection—eg, develop information and education materials for clinicians, quality and safety managers, and hospital administrators
- Health promotion—eg, promote awareness of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia
- Disease prevention—eg, create a sense of urgency for PBM as a new evidence-based standard of care through professional training and education
- Governance—eg, create and institute a national PBM steering committee under the authority of the Ministry of Health
- Workforce, equipment, and facilities—eg, provide hospital facilities for PBM
- Organization and funding—eg, organize reallocation of funds and resources toward PBM
- Communication—eg, provide PBM webpage sections for patients, health professionals, and health administrators
- Research—eg, conduct PBM-related studies focusing on patient outcomes, cost-effectiveness, etc.
The EC said the publication of their PBM guides is timely, as the journal Transfusion recently published results from a 5-year PBM program in Western Australia, which is the world’s largest PBM program to date. The program included 605,046 patients admitted to 4 major adult tertiary-care hospitals.
The use of blood products was reduced by 41% during the study period. The program also resulted in a 28% reduction in hospital mortality, a 15% reduction in the average hospital length of stay, a 21% decrease in hospital-acquired infections, and a 31% decrease in the incidence of heart attack or stroke.
