Patient blood management is key before elective surgery.

摘要

Writing in The Lancet, Khaled Musallam and colleagues address an important topic through their analysis of the American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database;1 namely, what is the prevalence of preoperative anaemia in patients undergoing major non-cardiac surgery and what are the implications? Moreover, by removal of data for allogeneic red-blood-cell transfusions in their analysis (and thus in the absence of treatment for anaemia) the independent and natural course of preoperative anaemia is shown. The main finding of their study1 was that preoperative anaemia—even to a mild degree-was significantly and independently associated with increased postoperative morbidity and mortality.