Blood salvage use in gynecologic oncology.
BACKGROUND
Blood salvage allows for collection and processing of surgical blood loss with the eventual reinfusion of washed red blood cells (RBCs) back to the patient. The use of blood salvage in patients undergoing surgery for malignancy is off-label. Controversy exists as to the risk of potential cancer dissemination resulting from the reinfusion of the processed blood, but no data are available to confirm this risk. Recent studies have demonstrated that filtering the salvaged blood using a leukoreduction filter (LRF) significantly decreases the number of cancer cells in the recovered RBC aliquot in a variety of cancer types.


METHODS
Patients on the gynecologic oncology service as part of the bloodless surgery program at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center from April 1998 to April 2007 were identified. Three patients that had reinfusion of cell salvage blood (all reinfusions were performed after filtration with a LRF) were studied further with emphasis placed on long-term outcomes.


RESULTS
Two of the three patients did not show any evidence of metastases after surgery. The only patient that developed evidence of hematogenous progression had known liver metastases at the time of her initial diagnosis and therefore had hematogenous dissemination before her index surgery.


CONCLUSIONS
In this series of patients undergoing surgery for malignancies on the gynecologic oncology service, blood salvage with LRF was not definitively associated with hematogenous dissemination. Further large controlled studies are needed to demonstrate the clinical safety of the use of blood salvage in this setting.
Nagarsheth
Nimesh P
NP
Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York 10029-6574, USA. nimesh.nagarsheth@gmail.com
Sharma
Tarun
T
Shander
Aryeh
A
Awan
Ahsan
A
D000368:Aged; D001804:Blood Transfusion, Autologous / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000601:surgery*; D016896:Treatment Outcome