Blood Management Service

The Blood Management Service at Banner Baywood Medical Center allows patients to plan and manage use of blood before they go in for surgery. Studies have shown that blood management can improve patient outcomes after surgery.

Banner Baywood's pharmacy department along with our physicians have worked hard to study how blood management helps the patient. It's usually recommended to those who are scheduled for elective, noncardiac, nonvascular procedures such as hip or knee surgery.

Before surgery, patients can talk with their doctor and discuss ways to manage their blood loss during surgery. Some of the options of the Blood Management Service include:

• blood transfusion from another donor
• blood transfusion from your own body
• drugs that help increase the body's red blood cell count and hemoglobin level reducing the chance for a blood transfusion during and after surgery.

Blood Management Service is intended to be an innovative approach to improve both outcomes and patient safety and reduce length of stay. Here are the goals of Blood Management Service:

• improve pre-op heoglobin
• decrease the need for transfusions
• blood conservation
• improve patient outcome and safety

Patients interested in blood management should talk with their physician or surgeon and are recommended to be screened for this procedure three weeks before surgery.