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Autologous Blood Transfusion - The Chitra Experience
(SCTIMST, 2024-06-15) Angel Mary Sam
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a huge shortage of blood donations in our Blood Centre. To alleviate the crisis, we re-introduced the Autologous Transfusion programme. Autologous transfusion is one in which the donor and recipient of blood is the same individual. This avoids serious adverse effects caused by allogeneic blood transfusion, alleviate blood shortages and save blood resources. We could perform autologous transfusion in patients undergoing neurosurgeries as well as vascular surgeries. Methods such as Pre-deposit Autologous Donation, Acute Normovolemic Hemodilution and Intra-operative Cell Salvage were used according to the case specificity and patient conditions. We found that autologous transfusion is feasible in neurosurgical cases like Meningioma, Schwannoma, AV Malformations and spine surgeries and for vascular surgical cases like abdominal aortic aneurysms and thoracic mass lesions. The requirement of allogeneic blood and blood components intra-operatively can be significantly reduced by autologous blood transfusion. It can be practiced routinely and, is a safe alternative during any shortage or pandemic.