Patient Blood Management Strategies to Avoid Transfusions in Body Contouring Operations: Controlled Clinical Trial

Background: Anemia is a frequent process of morbidity and mortality in body contouring procedures. In aesthetic surgery, there are no standardized processes to minimize bleeding during surgery. For this reason, a study was designed to implement patient blood management strategies to reduce bleeding and transfusions in patients undergoing body contouring operations. Methods: From January of 2017 to May of 2018, a prospective cohort-type observational study was conducted, including two groups of patients undergoing single or combined body contouring procedures. The first group did not receive patient blood management strategies, whereas the second group did receive these strategies. These measures consisted of preoperative strategies to ensure the patient had optimal hemoglobin and hematocrit levels and supportive intraoperative measures to minimize blood loss. The results were validated with different statistical tests according to the variables studied. Results: A total of 409 patients were included in the study and were divided into two groups. The anthropometric and hemoglobin variables were similar in both groups. The 207 patients for whom patient blood management strategies were implemented lost an average of 1.2 g/dl less hemoglobin at 72 hours than the 202 patients for whom patient blood management strategies were not implemented ( p ≤ 0.0001). Conclusions: Patient blood management strategies, such as increasing hemoglobin before surgery, and strategies to minimize blood loss during surgery, proved to be effective at reducing bleeding in patients undergoing body contouring surgery, also decreasing the need to perform postoperative blood transfusions. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, II.