COMMITMENT OF A HOSPITAL TRANSFUSION COMMITTEE TO IMPROVING USE OF ALBUMIN BY SWITCHING HYPERTONIC ALBUMIN PRODUCTS TO A LOWER FORMULATION

Abstract

There are two standards of hypertonic albumin products in Japan, a 20% w/v human albumin solution formulation and a 25% formulation, but there have been no guidelines for their proper usage. To reduce waste and use albumin properly in our hospital, the Hospital Transfusion Committee committed to enforcing the switching of 25% albumin formulation to 20% formulation. After this change, although 25% formulation accounted for a dominant 72.8% (20,375 g) of hypertonic albumin products in year 2008, 20% formulation accounted for 77.8% (16,190 g) of hypertonic albumin in 2014, which led to a reduction of 10,507.5 g of total albumin.