They will be randomly assigned to transfusion with 10- or 21-day-old blood.
A total of 838 patients from 25 centers were randomly assigned to a liberal transfusion strategy (maintenance of the hemoglobin >100 g/l) or a restrictive transfusion strategy (maintenance of hemoglobin >70 g/l).
The "FOCUS" study of restrictive transfusion in high-risk patients after hip surgery also showed no difference in mortality or morbidity in the group assigned to the restrictive transfusion strategy [17].
The "FOCUS" study of restrictive transfusion in high-risk patients after hip surgery also showed no difference in mortality or morbidity in the group assigned to the restrictive transfusion strategy [ 17].
In this planned ancillary study, we tested the hypothesis that a patient centered outcome, health-related quality of life (HRQL), would be greater in participants randomly assigned to the blood transfusion therapy group than the observation group.
A 'bleeding' transfusion indication was assigned if this was documented in the chart or if the transfusion was administered in association with a predefined hemoglobin decrease of more than 2.0 g/dl over 24 hours.
Each transfusion event, which may involve one or more units of PRBC, was assigned one dominant reason for transfusion by one of the investigators.
Of these, 461 were randomly assigned to a restrictive strategy (transfusion when the hemoglobin level fell to below 7 g/dL) and 460 to a liberal strategy (transfusion when the hemoglobin fell to below 9 g/dL).
RESULTS A total of 196 children (mean age, 10 years) were randomly assigned to the observation or transfusion group and were followed for a median of 3 years.
