The Muskegon Chronicle TUESDAY DECEMBER 24, 1996 3D
By LINDA A. JOHNSON
Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. — Bloodless surgery, gaining popularity because of religious caveats against blood transfusions and general fears of contracting infections, is getting another boost from research showing that patients who refuse tranfusions generally fare well.
That's the conclusion of a National Institutes of Health study done by Dr. Jeffrey L. Carson and colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
"In recent years, there's been a push to limit blood use," partly because of lingering fears about contracting AIDS an Carson, professor and chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick.
Jehovah's Witnesses, who oppose blood transfusions because of biblical precepts about the sacredness of blood, have pushed doctors and hospitals for better medical care without transfusions.
That pressure spurred doctors at Englewood Hospital two years ago to create the New Jersey Institute for the Advancement of Bloodless Medicine and Surgery. It has handled some 1,500 medical and surgical cases, 90 percent of them Jehovah's Witnesses.
In a study published recently in the British medical journal Lancet, Carson and colleagues examined the case records of 1,958 adult Jehovah's Witnesses who underwent surgery without transfusions from 1981-94 at 12 U.S. hospitals including Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center in Camden.
"When you look at the overall mortality rates. it says that most patients do well and that withhold ing blood may be a safe way of treating them," Carson said.
His study found that only about 3 percent of the Jehovah's Witnesses patients died within a month of surgery, but the risk of death was 4.3 times higher in those with heart disease than those without. The death rate was about 25 times higher for patients with a hemoglobin count half of normal than for those near normal. Hemoglobin is the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body's tissues.
Carson is seeking another grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for a study of thousands of patients comparing outcomes of those receiving transfusions early in treatment to those not receiving them until their hemoglobin count hits half of normal.
The attention could spur expansion of some of the 53 bloodless surgery programs at U.S. hospitals recognized by the Jehovah's Witnesses.
At Englreferred from 15 states, a team of surgeons, plus nurses, anesthesiologists and other staff coordinates each patient's medical or surgical treatment, according to his or her wishes, through nurse manager Sherri Ozawa, who is herself a Jehovah's Witness.
One success story is machinist Clayton Lawson of Delhi, N.Y., who was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in January, when his wife was two months pregnant.
After surgeons at two New York state hospitals refused to do the risky, bloody operation without a transfusion, the 36-year-old Jehovah's Witness turned to the Englewood program.
He recovered so quickly, Lawson said, that he left the hospital after three days and was back to work in two months.