who awaits major surgery. However, these transfusions may not be as safe or as necessary as commonly
believed. An increasing number of medical experts regard blood transfusions to be an outmoded,
unproved, and even dangerous procedure. Yet it is still routinely used as the main method of medical
intervention in emergencies—in many cases without any medical justification for its use and without
guidelines as to when it should be applied.
Different parts of the blood are used for the medical procedures, including blood albumin, plasma, and
whole blood or red blood cells. In its 1989 publication entitled “Blood Technologies, Services and
Issues,” the Office of Technology Assessment Task Force in the U.S. examined the overuse of the various
blood products. It came to the conclusion that as much as 20-25 percent of the red blood cells, 90 percent
of the albumin and 95 percent of the fresh-frozen plasma transfused into patients are unnecessary. This
situation has not changed since the study was done.
A major Canadian study, which was published in 1998 in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, revealed that fewer patients died when they were given a restricted amount of transfused
blood. During the trial, 52 percent fewer transfusions were given to the restrictive group, and transfusion
was avoided altogether in one-third of those patients. The death rate in the control group, which received
normal, liberal amounts of blood transfusions, was 24 percent, compared with 18 percent in the restrictive
transfusion group. “The bottom line is, less transfusion is better than more transfusion” said Paul Herbert,
the trial’s principal investigator. The restrictive transfusion strategy could effectively save one life for
every 17 patients transfused.
The most common trigger for authorizing a blood transfusion for hospital patients awaiting surgery is a
low hemoglobin level (hemoglobin in red blood cells is used to transport oxygen to all the other cells in
the body; and red blood cells need iron to accomplish that). Women naturally have a lower red blood cell
count than men but medics use the same trigger levels for both men and women. “Iron deficiency anemia
continues to be among the leading reasons for transfusions, even though it rarely warrants [them],” said
the U.S. Office of Technology report in its concluding statement.
The standard hemoglobin trigger-level for justifying a transfusion lies at below ten gram (g) per 100
milliliters (ml) of blood. However, this figure emerged from a misreading by a hematologist during a
study of hemoglobin levels in dogs! The results of the study, which showed no established links with
human physiology, became the main referential guideline for all anesthesiology students thereafter.
Dangers Lurking In The Blood
It is commonly known that diseases can be transmitted by way of blood transfusions. But apart from
receiving viruses through foreign blood, patients may develop even more serious complications as a result
of a transfusion. Numerous studies show that blood transfusions given to cancer patients can cause
depression of their immune system leading to a high rate of recurrence and secondary cancers.
In a controlled study of patients with larynx cancer, the recurrence rate was 14 percent among those
who did not receive blood transfusions compared to 65 percent among those who did. More specific
research showed that half of the patients who suffered from colonic, rectal, cervical and prostrate cancers
and received whole blood were reported to have a recurrence compared to a quarter among those who
received only red blood cells.
Blood components are routinely irradiated, supposedly to avert rejection of the foreign blood by the
recipient’s immune system. No studies show that this practice is harmless for the blood cells; it is simply
assumed that it has no negative consequences. But knowing what we know today about the dangers of