The question of RBC transfusion to adults with acute coronary syndrome is not addressed in the guidelines of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society [87].
First, this was a post hoc analysis of data from three clinical trials, none of which were designed to address the question of appropriate transfusion thresholds.
The question of RBC transfusion to adults with acute coronary syndrome is not addressed in the guidelines of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society [ 87].
Nevertheless, in the future we need to look more deeply into the question of beneficial transfusion thresholds to determine whether the target groups consist of patients with cardiovascular diseases and hip fracture patients from nursing homes.
Although numerous clinical studies have addressed the question of perioperative blood transfusion and cancer recurrence and/or survival, the possibly harmful effect of allogenic blood transfusion on immunomodulation remains unresolved.
The question of whether a transfusion trigger in excess of 20% Hct during normothermic CPB is still supported requires a larger prospective and randomized trial.
The fundamental question of whether RBC transfusion is safe/effective in cardiac surgery is important, and this current study highlights significant concerns particularly with regard to pulmonary complications.
More recently, specific studies looking at the immunosuppressive effect of blood transfusion have raised new questions for the practice of transfusion in today's medicine.
Furthermore, the study by Rivers and coworkers did not specifically address the question of an optimal RBC transfusion trigger in this setting, and hence it is difficult to know whether this liberal transfusion trigger was responsible for the mortality benefit seen in the goal-directed group.
We designed and distributed a short online questionnaire survey addressing questions about a constructed abstract entitled "Association of transfusion and clinical outcomes in a large cohort" among the participants of ISBT 2012, Cancun.
