Abstract
Recently much more attention has been paid to autologous blood transfusion in elective orthopaedic surgery because of problems associated with homologous blood transfusion such as isoimmunization, graft versus host disease, and various kinds of viral infections.
Since 1989, we have used the predeposit autologous blood transfusion by the modified leap-frog method. Since October 1993, we have used recombinant human erythropoietin. We evaluated 58 patients, mainly who were to undergo elective hip surgery. Erythropoietin was applied to 14 of those 58 patients during the predeposit procedure.
As a result, only 5 of 58 patients needed homologous blood transfusion. In patients treated with erythropoietin, the progress of anemia after autologus blood being taken was significantly less than in the nontreated. No side effects were encountered in this study.
Thus, we conclude that autologous blood transfusion stored as liquid blood is safe and useful for elective orthopaedic surgery, and that the erythropoietin definitely increases the amount of predeposit and enhances recovery from the anemia.
