The Effect of Autotransfusion System Among Homologous Blood Usage in Coronary Artery Surgery

Homologous blood usage is an important part of open heart surgery. Because of its frequency and life threatening complication; providing techniques that miantain less hormologous transfusion became inevitable. Collection of blood with "Haemonetics cell saver" device introperatively, its preparation and transfusion back to the patient postoperatively is one of those techniques. This system was applied to 250 patienlts who underwent CABG in our hospital between 1991-1993. The results were compared with the control group consisting of further 250 patients. Blood which was collected before heparinization and after the infusion of protamin sulphate was prepared and given back to the patients postoperatively. In this study, the amount of blood given to the patients, 24 hours of drainages, the amount of autotransfusion blood collected were registered. The haematologic, biochemical and clinical evaluations on the operative, first postoperative and discharge days were also done. While the homologous blood usage in the autotransfusion group was 1.03±0.1 units, it was 3.22±0.25 units in the control group (p<0.001). 155 patients (62%) in our study group and 70 patients (28%) in the control group did not receive any transfusion. Postoperative C3 levels were lower in the autotransfusion group and the difference between the two groups were statistically significant (p<0.05). In conclusion, comparison of results of the study and control groups shows that, usage of the intraoperative autotransfusion system not only reduces the amount of homologous blood used, but also cause no clinical, haematologic and biochemical disadvantages. Therefore, routine usage of this system can be proposed.