Determination of the Average Blood Units Reserved and Consumed in Elective Shoulder Surgeries: A Single Center Study in Tehran

Background: orthopedic procedures on areas of the body where tourniquet application is not possible, such as the shoulder, is usually accompanied by significant bleeding in addition to a higher need for blood transfusion. therefore, packed cell units are generally reserved prior to these kinds of procedures, however, not all of those are transfused during surgery. the waste of unused blood units takes a lot of money, time, and energy of the blood bank staff. in this study, we evaluated the average blood units reserved and consumed for elective shoulder surgeries to determine the c/t ratio (crossmatch/transfusion). methods: in this cross-sectional study, all recorded cases of elective shoulder surgeries between 2015 and 2017 were investigated through our hospital blood bank registry. the number of reserved blood units and transfused blood units (packed cell) for each surgical operation were recorded in the checklist. finally, the average number of reserved and consumed blood units were determined using the spss v.16 software. results: in this work, 157 patients with a mean age of 36 ± 19.6 years were studied, of which 66.9% were male. the average number of reserved blood units was 1.5 ± 0.586 and the mean number of injected blood units were 0.216 ± 0.672. in addition, the average number of injected blood units in the men’s group was significantly higher; this difference was statistically significant. conclusions: considering the ratio of reserved blood units to the injected ones, this ratio, on shoulder surgeries at our hospital in tehran, was within the normal range.