Turkulainen Esa, Peltola Elissa, Perola Markus, Koskinen Miika, Arvas Mikko, Ilmakunnas Minna
Finnish Red Cross Blood Service, Research and Development, Helsinki, Finland.
IT Management, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland.
Vox Sang. 2025 Jun;120(6):584-596. doi: 10.1111/vox.70016. Epub 2025 Apr 23.
Efficient blood supply chain requires accurate demand estimates. Blood demand is created by clinicians making transfusion decisions based on patient status. To better understand the use of blood units, we tracked their use hourly and across a large hospital organization.
We analysed blood use in adult patients over 2021-2022 at HUS Helsinki University Hospital, serving a population of 1.7 million and consuming a third of blood units used in Finland. We utilized electronic health records (EHR) to map transfusions to patient demographics, diagnoses, medical specialties, treatment events, surgical procedures and laboratory values. Data were matched to transfusions of red blood cells, platelets and plasma using timestamps and treatment episodes.
In total, 107,331 units were transfused to 19,637 unique patients in 50,978 transfusion episodes. Most transfusions occurred in emergency settings, with 61.5% of use driven by emergency department admissions. The most common diagnoses were malignant neoplasms, anaemia and cardiovascular diseases. In total, 47.9% of transfusions were associated with a surgical procedure. Of these, 72.9% were for urgent surgery. Blood use peaked in the early evening and was lowest during morning office hours.
The study offers a comprehensive picture of blood use in one of the largest European hospital organizations. In addition to elective use, a significant portion of blood demand is driven by urgent and emergency needs, which introduce some uncertainty in predicting blood use. Future studies should aim to understand both elective and emergency blood use to help improve demand estimates.
高效的血液供应链需要准确的需求预估。血液需求由临床医生根据患者状况做出输血决策而产生。为了更好地了解血液单位的使用情况，我们按小时并在一个大型医院机构内追踪其使用情况。
我们分析了2021年至2022年期间赫尔辛基大学医院（HUS）成年患者的用血情况，该医院服务人口达170万，消耗了芬兰三分之一的血液单位。我们利用电子健康记录（EHR）将输血情况与患者人口统计学信息、诊断结果、医学专科、治疗事件、外科手术及实验室检查值进行匹配。数据通过时间戳和治疗时段与红细胞、血小板及血浆的输血情况相匹配。
在50978次输血事件中，共向19637名不同患者输注了107331个单位的血液。大多数输血发生在急诊情况下，61.5%的用血是由急诊科收治患者导致的。最常见的诊断是恶性肿瘤、贫血和心血管疾病。总共有47.9%的输血与外科手术有关。其中，72.9%是用于急诊手术。用血在傍晚时分达到峰值，在上午办公时间最低。
该研究全面呈现了欧洲最大的医院机构之一的用血情况。除了择期用血外，很大一部分血液需求是由紧急和急诊需求驱动的，这给预测用血带来了一些不确定性。未来的研究应旨在了解择期和急诊用血情况，以帮助改进需求预估。
