title: An analysis of blood usage in elective surgery.
abstract: Pre-operative blood requests are often greatly in excess of the number of units of blood actually transfused during elective surgical procedures. Such practices are costly in terms of laboratory manpower and leads to unnecessary wastage of blood due to outdating. Developing guidelines for the number of blood units to cross-match preoperatively for surgical procedures optimises the use of blood. This study reports on blood ordering patterns and offers guidelines on the maximum number of units of blood to order for some of the commoner surgical procedures. The use of a Type and Screen procedure is recommended for those operations where blood is regularly ordered but rarely used. Operative procedures listed under the Surgical Tables 1 and 2 and the Minor Surgical Procedure Table, Ministry of Health, Singapore, fall into this group.
mesh_terms: D001788:Blood Grouping and Crossmatching; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D006801:Humans; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative