Normovolemic hemodilution prior to cardiopulmonary bypass: An approach to autologous blood transfusion reduces post-operative homologous blood requirement

Cardiac surgery requires large amount ofblood transfusions. Homologous blood transfusion is the commonest method to procure the blood loss, which may lead various complications (endotoxemia, septicemia, and transfusion related lung injury)throughout the perioperative period. Normovolemic hemodilution (a type of autologous blood transfusion) may avoid this type of complications.

The concept of withdrawing a percentage of blood and leaving the patient anemic and normovolemic, is in-tended to minimize the loss of red blood-cells during surgery [1, 2, 3].

As the hemoglobin concentration is reduced through dilution, the blood that is lost during surgery will contain less hemoglobin, and at the same time autologous blood components can be preserved. We found in our study, autologous blood transfusion is also effective to reduce the homologous blood substitute (like platelets) and post-operative drainage which helps in early recovery.