Case Reports

Bloodless Surgery in a Pediatric Jehovah’s Witness

Department of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee

Address correspondence to: Jerry Allen, CCP, Department of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, 50 North Dunlap, Memphis, TN 38103. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 1 March 2013
Accepted: 1 October 2013

Abstract

Pediatric cardiac surgery in Jehovah’s Witness patients who refuse the use of blood products remains a challenge because of the extreme hemodilution caused by priming the circuit and subsequent cardiopulmonary bypass. We report our successful strategy for reducing the prime volume for a 2-year-old Jehovah’s Witness patient who required open heart surgery. We modified our conventional bypass circuit requirements for this size child by incorporating a lower prime oxygenator and reducing the size of the venous line and circuit, which decreased the circuit prime volume. We managed to reduce our initial sanguineous prime volume from 315 to 210 mL. The prime was further reduced to 160 mL by minimizing circuit length at the field and with venous prime sequestration prebypass. The postbypass hematocrit was 31%. Bloodless pediatric cardiac surgery in Jehovah’s Witness patients can be performed safely. Incorporating a lower prime oxygenator into a revised circuit alleviated the need for blood transfusion and allowed us to achieve our calculated flow rate of 2.6 L/min/m² while maintaining a hematocrit of 31%.