ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Currently brain dead solid organ transplantations are performed in several institutions, and these are extended in Korea. Especially liver transplantation requires such a large amounts of blood components including filtered and irradiated cellular components that blood bank should give a great support to provide them. For effective management and reducing workload of blood bank in solid organ transplantation, we evaluated the blood component usage according to the type of organ transplantation and suggest a guideline for its optimal blood ordering schedule. METHODS: From February 1995 to October 1997, 143 solid organ transplantations (18 adults and 7 pediatric liver transplants, 115 renal transplants and 3 heart transplants) were performed in Samsung Medical Center. We investigated amount of blood components requested by surgeons or anesthesiologists, and evaluated their usage, discard rate and C/T ratio (crossmatch to transfusion ratio) during perioperative, intraoperative and postoperative period for solid organ transplantation. In liver and heart transplantation, the usage of blood component according to the operative phases was also evaluated. RESULTS: All of the patients who underwent liver and heart transplantation and 15% of the patients who underwent renal transplantation were transfused with blood components during operation. For adult liver transplantation, 31.1 units of leukocyte-depleted red blood cells (LDRBC), 43.6 units of fresh frozen plasma (FFP) and 16.3 units of leukocyte depleted platelets (LDPC) on an average were transfused. Intraoperative salvage using Cell Saver was performed in liver transplantation and the volume of salvaged was 7127.6 mL which was equivalent to 28.5 units of RBCs. The C/T ratio of RBCs was 1.4. In pediatric liver transplantation, 4.8 units of LDRBC and 4.3 units of FFP were transfused with C/T ratio of 1.9. Two of 5 pediatric liver transplantation donors were transfused with 3 units of RBCs, 1.5 units of FFP and 1.0 unit of whole blood by preoperative autologous blood donation. Only 18 out of 115 patients who underwent renal transplantation were transfused with 2 units of RBCs and 2 units of FFP. The discard rate revealed over 60% and C/T ratio was 4.6-5.1 in renal transplantation. For the heart transplantation 1.3 units of RBCs, 5.6 units of FFP, and 7.3 units of LDPC were transfused. The C/T ratio was 3.8. CONCLUSION: Compared with foreign reports, slightly larger amount of blood components were used for liver transplantation, however similar amount were used for renal and heart transplantation. As the results of present study, we propose a guideline for optimal blood ordering schedule for solid organ transplantation considering the marginal safety : 40 units of LDRBC, 50 units of FFP, 20 units of LDPC and 8 units of Cryoprecipitate for adult liver transplantation; 5 units of LDRBC and 6 units of FFP for pediatric liver transplantation; 2 units of LDRBC, 6 units of FFP and 10 units of LDPC for heart transplantation. Additional requests of blood components for liver and heart transplantation might be decided considering the clinical situations.