Heart Surgery Without Blood

Dr. Jacob Bergsland recently told the American Heart Association’s 56th annual scientific meeting about a method being used to perform open-heart surgery without blood on infants and children. The method was “originally developed for Jehovah’s Witnesses,” according to the New York Daily News. “It relies in part on meticulous efforts to minimize blood loss during surgery. Just as important, it also involves lowering the patient’s body temperature to slow the rate of organ activity and what is called dilutional therapy.”

In this therapy the patient’s blood is infused “with a standard hospital mixture of sterile water, minerals and starch or other nutrients,” says the report. “This reduces the proportion of oxygen-carrying red cells in the blood and, providing it is not overdone, has a protective effect during the surgery.”

Dilutional therapy has other advantages, notes the Daily News: “For one, the treated blood circulates more readily than unthinned blood; for another, it can be used when the patient has a rare blood type that is difficult to match or unavailable. Then, too, it avoids the risk of complications from exposure to poorly matched blood or blood unknowingly contaminated with hepatitis or other viruses.”