Original Article

The Effect of Antifibrinolytic Use on Intraoperative Cell Salvage: Results from a National Registry of Surgical Procedures

Address correspondence to: Alfred H. Stammers, MSA, PBMS, CCP (Emeritus), Vice President, Clinical Quality and Outcomes Research, SpecialtyCare, 3 Maryland Farms, Suite 200 Brentwood, TN 18656. E-mail: al.stammers@specialtycare.net

Received: 19 March 2020
Accepted: 16 July 2020

Abstract

Intraoperative cell salvage (ICS) is a critical component of any blood management program involving surgery with a high potential for blood loss. The introduction of antifibrinolytics (AF) may reduce blood loss. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of AF on ICS in non-cardiac surgical procedures. Following institutional review board approval, 69,935 consecutive case records between January 2016 and September 2019 from a national registry of adult surgical patients were reviewed. Procedure types were stratified into one of nine surgical categories: general (GN, n = 1,525), neurosurgical (NS, n = 479), obstetric (OB, n = 1,563), cervical spine (CS, n = 2,701), lumbar spine (LS, n = 38,383), hip arthroplasty (HA, n = 13,327), knee arthroplasty (KA, n = 596), vascular (VA, n = 9,845), or orthopedic other (OO, n = 1,516). The primary endpoint was the use of AF with the secondary endpoints ICS shed blood volume and volume available for return. The overall use of AF across all surgical procedures increased from 21.4% in 2016 to 25.4% in 2019. The greatest increases were seen in NS (4.4% to 16.2%), LS (13.7% to 23.1%), and HA (55.8% to 61.9%). For several procedure types, there was an initial increase then either a leveling off or a decline in AF use: OB initially increased from 6.2% to 10.8% in 2018, whereas GN (9.4% to 7.2%) and VA surgery declined slightly (9.9% to 5.7%). When comparing patients who did not receive AF with those who did, there were similar volumes of ICS available for return in all groups, except for LS, GN, and VA, where lower volumes were seen in the No-AF groups. The use of AF has increased each year over the 4-year period in most of the surgical categories, but several have declined. There may be a beneficial effect of AF with lower ICS volumes available for return in a few groups.