Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - Transfusion-Free Surgery

A religious belief of Jehovah's Witnesses may also be good medicine for everyone

By Valerie Reitman
LOS ANGELES TIMES


QUOTE
....And surgeons - aware that transfusions are not an option for Witness patients - have learned to refine their technique by making more precise and gentle incisions. "It definitely ups your game," said Dr. Reginald Abraham, a cardiologist at Fountain Valley. "You're just that much more careful about even a minute amount of blood loss."....


...Witnesses have many examples of medical personnel warning that they will die without blood - only to be proven wrong. Avila's committee fields about 200 such calls a year.

Pregnant with twins, Cristina Cortez went to a large Los Angeles hospital with premature contractions and a hemoglobin level of 7.8. Without blood, the doctors said, she and the babies would die. They put her on iron supplements, which barely raised her hemoglobin in a week. The medical staff tried to talk her out of transferring to another hospital, warning that her treatment would be no different. But she went to Fountain Valley, where Dr. Vinod Malhotra, the director of the hospital's bloodless program, put her on intravenous iron, Epogen and prenatal vitamins, aware that the babies were absorbing the iron first. She delivered two healthy baby girls - one vaginally, the other by Caesarean (the cord was wrapped around her neck) - without any transfusions. At delivery Cortez's hemoglobin level went as low as 6, but doctors maintained the iron supplementation, and she left the hospital in four days...


Excellent entire article is here -

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781435339&path=!living&s=1 037645509005