“It’s now clear transfusing patients does not necessarily result in better outcomes,” said Dr. Brad Collins of Charleston Pathology, a proponent of stricter blood management. “A transfusion is like a transplant. You’re introducing a foreign substance from another human being into a person’s body. The natural reaction is for the body to reject it.”

Collins, who serves as Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s Medical Director of Laboratories, collaborated with hospital administrators to get BMH on the forefront of the blood conservation movement. In May 2008, the hospital initiated its own program, making it the first health care provider in the region to offer a set of comprehensive strategies and tools that can be used as alternatives to donor blood transfusions. So far, the program has reduced blood usage at the hospital by 16 percent.

In the operating room, BMH physicians are using a variety of blood-saving tools and techniques, among them laparoscopic and/or robotic surgery, special scalpels that lessen blood loss and a “cell saver” device used to collect and recycle a patient’s blood during surgery.

Another strategy is called “micro-sampling,” in which tiny blood samples are taken for lab testing rather than the standard size tubes.

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