Enhancing the utilization of packed red blood cells stock in maternity hospitals

Waleed M. Bawazir; Fahad M. Dakkam

doi:10.15537/smj.2020.6.25084

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Figure 1
The utilization of erythrocyte units for maternity operations at Abha Maternity and Children’s Hospital (AMCH), Abha, Saudi Arabia in the pre-implementation period. Includes cesarean section (c-section) operations before the implementation of blood transfusion request (BTR) holding policy, and the omission of the type and hold step at AMCH (January to March 2016). A total of 1,198 BTRs were received in the AMCH blood bank which reserved 1871 crossmatched units. Of all the maternity operations BTRs, 659 BTRs were for c-section operations which reserved 1429 crossmatched units of all maternity operations at AMCH. However, only 78 of these erythrocyte units were actually transfused to elective c-section patients.
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Figure 2
The cost-effectiveness of erythrocyte transfusion units for cesarean section (c-section) operations pre- and post- implementation of the corrective policy at Abha Maternity and Children’s Hospital, Abha, Saudi Arabia (January - December 2016). The corrective policy excluded BTRs of healthy women from routine compatibility tests. The crossmatch/transfusion ratio for c-section operations was 18 fold the recommended C:T limit indicating that overall 94.5% of the crossmatched units were not transfused. The corrective sorting of BTRs according to the expected need for transfusions significantly increased the efficiency of blood utilization to 100%. Hence, all crossmatched blood units were transfused (McNemars’ χ²(1) = 55.408, p<0.001).