Relationship of hematocrit level on blood trans-fusion and hospital stay in coronary artery bypass graft surgery

Objective: to determine the impact of hematocrit level on post operative blood transfusion and hospital stay in patients for coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg). material and methods: this descriptive study was conducted in over a period of 12 months from january 2012 to december 2012 in government lady reading hospital peshawar. in this study 56 patients 40 male and 16 females were selected who were due for cabg surgery having ages above 18 years; patients having other co morbidities were excluded from the study. results: there was a linear correlation between the pre-op hct and postop number of blood transfusion and duration of hospital stay. the patients having low hematocrit levels had a longer stay in hospital as well as they had more post op blood transfusions. the pre-op hct was closely related to post op number of transfusion and duration of hospital stay because both values 0.655 and 0.738 were close to 1 and correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 tailed). result showed that for every one hct rise patients gets 0.28 stay more post op blood transfusion and 0.239 day more to stay in hospital. conclusions: low pre operative hematocrit was strongly associated with more number of blood transfusion and increase in hospital stay. methods should be adopted to correct pre-operative hematocrit before surgery.