Blood management in pediatric spinal deformity surgery: review of a 2-year experience.

Despite being a retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing scoliosis surgery over a period of 2 years, this trial is among the few evaluating the usefulness of a blood management program in pediatric surgery, and with very good results. The transfusion rate was 1.7% in idiopathic scoliosis and 36% in the neuromuscular scoliosis patients, i.e. very low transfusion rates compared to published data in similar populations. Blood loss relative to the patient’s blood volume is the major predictor of allogeneic transfusion, with the former being dependent on the extent of the repair.

Another interesting finding of this study was that the number of patients with low von Willebrand activities was unexpectedly high (11%) and tended to correlate with an increased risk of bleeding.

– Elvira Bisbe