title: Past, present and forecast of transfusion medicine: What has changed and what is expected to change?
abstract: Blood transfusion is the second most used medical procedures in health care systems worldwide. Over the last few decades, significant changes have been evolved in transfusion medicine practices. These changes were mainly needed to increase safety, efficacy, and availability of blood products as well as reduce recipients' unnecessary exposure to allogeneic blood. Blood products collection, processing, and storage as well as transfusion practices throughout all patient populations were the main stream of these changes. Health care systems across the world have adopted some or most of these changes to reduce transfusion risks, to improve overall patients' outcome, and to reduce health care costs. In this article, we are going to present and discuss some of these recent modifications and their impact on patients' safety.
authors.affiliation: University of Rochester medical center, department of pathology and laboratory medicine, 14642 Rochester, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Amy E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: University of Rochester medical center, department of pathology and laboratory medicine, 14642 Rochester, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Majed A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Refaai
authors.affiliation: University of Rochester medical center, department of pathology and laboratory medicine, 14642 Rochester, NY, USA. Electronic address: neil_blumberg@urmc.rochester.edu.
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Blumberg
mesh_terms: D001802:Blood Substitutes; D001803:Blood Transfusion / Q000639:trends*; D017848:Blood-Borne Pathogens; D017707:Erythrocyte Transfusion; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007167:Immunotherapy; D064826:Transfusion Medicine / Q000639:trends*; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000628:therapy
chemical_list: D001802:Blood Substitutes