[Frontiers of blood transfusion for critical bleeding: preface and comments].

The annual surveys of critical incidents in Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists (JSA)-certified hospitals in 1999-2002 demonstrated that massive and critical bleeding was the major cause of intraoperative cardiac arrest leading to poor prognosis including death and permanent brain damage. The surveys also suggested that type-specific blood transfusion and emergent O-type blood transfusions were underutilized. Therefore, the JSA and the Japan Society of Transfusion Medicine and Cell Therapy publicized the guidelines for treatment of critical bleeding in 2007. Five academic societies publicized the guidelines for management of critical bleeding in obstetrics in 2010. Each hospital is expected to make institutional emergency blood transfusion guidelines on the basis of the above guidelines in order to decrease the incidence of critical bleeding and to improve the prognosis of the patients with critical bleeding.