Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) are a Christian faith with > 1 million members in the United States who do not accept autologous blood transfusions. The optimal management of these patients undergoing neurosurgical procedures is not well defined. Here, we examined the feasibility and safety of JW undergoing neurosurgery in a blood management program.
Sixty-eight JW patients including 23 males and 45 females (mean age 53 +/- 12 years) who underwent a variety of cranial (n=19) and spinal (n=49) neurosurgical procedures over a 5-year period were identified retrospectively and their hospital charts, anesthetic records and operative reports reviewed. A concurrent cohort of sex - age- and procedure-matched non-JW controls also was identified.
Among JW patients a cell-saving system was used in 27 cases, with blood re-transfused in 13 cases. Lactated Ringers solution was used extensively intra-operatively; albumin was given to 15 patients. The median decrease in Hgb was 2.1 g/dL. One patient had a postoperative Hgb value < 7 g/dL. One patient returned to the operating room to revise a lumbar pedicle screw, and one patient had postoperative seizures. No cardiopulmonary complications, sepsis, pneumonia, or wound infection were observed. When compared to the matched control group, similar outcome results were observed. Blood loss and operative time also were similar in JW patients and controls.
Neurosurgical procedures in Jehovah's Witnesses are feasible, safe, and have similar outcomes to patients willing to accept transfusion when managed within a multidisciplinary blood management program.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 November 2022.
All research outputs
#10,562,906
of 32,209,097 outputs
Outputs from World Neurosurgery
#1,516
of 7,851 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#113,378
of 323,175 outputs
Outputs of similar age from World Neurosurgery
#19
of 92 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,209,097 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 66th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,851 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.4. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 92 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
