Communication Mechanisms between the Bedside and the Blood Bank

Abstract

Transfusions of blood elements are important therapeutic procedures in daily medical practice which have contributed to the enormous expansion of possibilities in modern patient management. Larger and more complex operations have been made possible in surgery, while in non-surgical disciplines patients can be treated more intensively, for instance, in haematology and oncology. Transfusions have become part of a more total approach, which can be best described as supportive haemotherapy. This term is preferable over the term transfusion medicine since it is more adequately covering this entire area in modern patient care. It concerns a clinical discipline in which decisions on the nature and extent of therapy are mostly made at the bedside.