title: The clinical significance of blood transfusion at the time of radical hysterectomy.
abstract: A retrospective review was conducted to evaluate the clinical implications of perioperative blood transfusion in the surgical management of stage IB cervical cancer. The investigation focused on 126 patients treated with radical hysterectomy and retroperitoneal lymph node dissection who were found to have clear surgical margins, negative retroperitoneal lymph nodes, and no lymph-vascular space involvement in the hysterectomy specimen, and who had no perioperative radiation therapy, no history of immunosuppression with medication, and at least 18 months of follow-up. The distributions of age, weight, operative time, nodal yields, mean lesion diameters, median depths of invasion, and histologic subtypes were not statistically different between the transfused and untransfused groups. The average estimated blood loss among the transfused patients was 1104 mL, compared with 764 mL among the untransfused patients (P = .015). Among the 68 who received blood perioperatively, there were ten recurrences (14.7%), compared with two (3.4%) among the 58 patients who did not receive blood (P = .035). In this select population of patients, in which perioperative transfusion was isolated as a variable, transfusion adversely affected the outcome of surgical therapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Stanford University Medical Center, California.
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Eisenkop
authors.forename: N M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Spirtos
authors.forename: T W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Montag
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moossazadeh
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hendrickson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D017707:Erythrocyte Transfusion; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007044:Hysterectomy / Q000379:methods*; D007432:Intraoperative Period; D008197:Lymph Node Excision; D008875:Middle Aged; D012008:Recurrence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015996:Survival Rate; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*