The Growing Demand for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery
“All those dealing with blood and caring for surgical patients have to consider bloodless surgery.”—Dr. Joachim Boldt, professor of anesthesiology, Ludwigshafen, Germany.
THE tragedy of AIDS has compelled scientists and physicians to take additional steps to make the operating room a safer place. Obviously, this has meant more stringent blood screening. But experts say that even these measures do not ensure zero-risk transfusions. “Even as society expends great resources on making the blood supply safer than ever,” says the magazine Transfusion, “we believe patients will still try to avoid allogeneic [donor] transfusions simply because the blood supply can never be completely safe.”
Not surprisingly, many doctors are becoming wary of administering blood. “Blood transfusions are basically no good, and we are very aggressive in avoiding them for everybody,” says Dr. Alex Zapolanski, of San Francisco, California.
The general public too is becoming aware of the dangers of transfusions. Indeed, a 1996 poll revealed that 89 percent of Canadians would prefer an alternative to donated blood. “Not all patients will refuse homologous transfusions as do Jehovah’s Witnesses,” states the Journal of Vascular Surgery. “Nonetheless, the risks of disease transmission and immunomodulation offer clear evidence that we must find alternatives for all of our patients.”
A Preferred Method
Thankfully, there is an alternative—bloodless medicine and surgery. Many patients view it not as a last resort but as a preferred treatment, and with good reason. Stephen Geoffrey Pollard, a British consultant surgeon, notes that the morbidity and mortality rates among those who receive bloodless surgery are “at least as good as those patients who receive blood, and in many cases they are spared the postoperative infections and complications often attributable to blood.”
How did bloodless medical treatment develop? In one sense the question is rather odd, since bloodless medicine actually predates the use of blood. Indeed, it was not until the early 20th century that transfusion technology had advanced to the point where it was routinely used. Nevertheless, in recent decades some have popularized the field of bloodless surgery. For example, during the 1960’s noted surgeon Denton Cooley performed some of the first open-heart operations without the use of blood.
With the rise of hepatitis among transfusion recipients during the 1970’s, many doctors began looking for alternatives to blood. By the 1980’s a number of large medical teams were performing bloodless surgery. Then, when the AIDS epidemic broke out, these teams were repeatedly consulted by others who were eager to adopt the same techniques. During the 1990’s many hospitals developed programs that offer bloodless options to their patients.
Doctors have now successfully applied bloodless techniques during operations and emergency procedures that traditionally required transfusions. “Major cardiac, vascular, gynaecological and obstetrical, orthopaedic, and urological surgery can be performed successfully without using blood or blood products,” notes D.H.W. Wong, in the Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia.
One advantage of bloodless surgery is that it promotes better-quality care. “The surgeon’s skill is of the greatest importance in the prevention of blood loss,” says Dr. Benjamin J. Reichstein, a director of surgery in Cleveland, Ohio. A South African legal journal says that in certain instances surgery without blood can be “quicker, cleaner and less expensive.” It adds: “Certainly the aftercare treatment in many instances has proved cheaper and less time-consuming.” These are just a few of the reasons why some 180 hospitals around the world now have programs specializing in bloodless medicine and surgery.
Blood and Jehovah’s Witnesses
For Bible-based reasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusions.* But they do accept—and vigorously pursue—medical alternatives to blood. “Jehovah’s Witnesses actively seek the best in medical treatment,” said Dr. Richard K. Spence, when director of surgery at a New York hospital. “As a group, they are the best educated consumers the surgeon will ever encounter.”
Doctors have perfected many bloodless surgery techniques on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Consider the experience of cardiovascular surgeon Denton Cooley. Over a period of 27 years, his team performed bloodless open-heart surgery on 663 of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The results clearly demonstrate that cardiac operations can be successfully performed without the use of blood.
True, many have criticized Jehovah’s Witnesses for their refusal of blood. But a guide published by the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland calls the Witnesses’ position “a sign of respect for life.” In truth, the Witnesses’ rigorous stand has been a major force behind safer medical treatment becoming available for all. “Jehovah’s Witnesses in need of surgery have shown the way and exerted pressure for improvements in an important sector of the Norwegian health service,” writes Professor Stein A. Evensen, of Norway’s National Hospital.
To assist doctors in providing treatment without the use of blood, Jehovah’s Witnesses have developed a helpful liaison service. Presently, more than 1,400 Hospital Liaison Committees worldwide are equipped to provide doctors and researchers with medical literature from a data base of over 3,000 articles related to bloodless medicine and surgery. “Not only Jehovah’s Witnesses, but patients in general, are today less likely to be given unnecessary blood transfusions because of the work of the Witnesses’ Hospital Liaison Committees,” notes Dr. Charles Baron, a professor at Boston College Law School.*
The information on bloodless medicine and surgery that has been compiled by Jehovah’s Witnesses has been of benefit to many in the medical field. For example, in preparing material for a book entitled Autotransfusion: Therapeutic Principles and Trends, the authors asked Jehovah’s Witnesses to provide them with information about alternatives to blood transfusion. The Witnesses gladly granted their request. With gratitude the authors later stated: “In all our reading on this subject, we have never seen such a concise, complete list of strategies to avoid homologous blood transfusion.”
Progress in the medical field has caused many to consider bloodless medicine. Where will this lead us? Professor Luc Montagnier, discoverer of the AIDS virus, states: “The evolution of our understanding in this field shows that blood transfusions must one day die out.” In the meantime, alternatives to blood are already saving lives.
[Footnotes]
By invitation, Hospital Liaison Committees also make presentations to hospital medical staff. In addition, if their assistance is specifically requested, they help patients to have early, open, and continual communication with the physician in charge.
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