ANEMO: a multidisciplinary approach for reducing patients’ exposure to allogeneic blood in orthopedic surgery

In recent years a growing agreement on the need to limit the use of blood transfusion, particularly from allogeneic donors, in surgical patients is developing in many Countries. This convincement is based on claimed evidences regarding at least 3 different aspects: 1. The negative effect of blood transfusion on the clinical outcome in surgical patients. Indeed different studies have shown blood transfusion as an independent negative prognostic factor on morbidity (post-operative infections, delayed wound-healing and mortality. 2. The significant economic costs associated with blood transfusion, that include both direct cost of transfusion process (costs of blood component, pre-transfusion tests, transport, delivering and transfusion of blood units, inventory and data management) and indirect costs such as those arising from management of transfusion related morbidities. 3. The need to preserve the availability of a scarce resource and to avoid future blood product supply shortage...