Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF HAEMATOLOGY
Volume 191, Issue 3, Pages 340-346Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/bjh.16736
Keywords
blood shortage; triage; massive bleeding; guidance; National Blood Transfusion Committee
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The emerging COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed healthcare resources worldwide, and for transfusion services this could potentially result in rapid imbalance between supply and demand due to a severe shortage of blood donors. This may result in insufficient blood components to meet every patient's needs resulting in difficult decisions about which patients with major bleeding do and do not receive active transfusion support. This document, which was prepared on behalf of the National Blood Transfusion Committee in England, provides a framework and triage tool to guide the allocation of blood for patients with massive haemorrhage during severe blood shortage. Its goal is to provide blood transfusions in an ethical, fair, and transparent way to ensure that the greatest number of life years are saved. It is based on an evidence- and ethics-based Canadian framework, and would become operational where demand for blood greatly exceeds supply, and where all measures to manage supply and demand have been exhausted. The guidance complements existing national shortage plans for red cells and platelets.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available