A guideline for anticipated blood usage during elective surgical procedures.

A realistic guideline for transfusion therapy was prepared, with the cooperation of the departments of anesthesiology and surgery, in order to reduce excessive crossmatching. The guideline recommends an ABO-Rh type and an antibody screen, instead of the ""routine'' two-unit crossmatch, for elective surgical procedures where blood is seldom used. For those operations normally necessitating hemotherapy, the number of units suggested for the preoperative crossmatch was determined by examination of the average number of units transfused in the past for that particular procedure. The guideline provides the anesthesiologic and surgical staff with the knowledge of how much blood was usually used during a particular elective surgical procedure and therefore how much blood should be preoperatively crossmatched for that procedure. Implementation of this guideline allows the blood bank to distribute its limited blood resources more efficiently and also decreases patient and laboratory costs.