The Unintended Consequences of Over-Reducing Cardiopulmonary Bypass Circuit Prime Volume
The Society of Thoracic Surgeon blood conservation guidelines recommend minimizing cardiopulmonary bypass circuit prime volume (PV) as an integral, evidence-based (Class I, Level A) blood conservation strategy. We used a large, multiinstitutional registry to evaluate the effectiveness of restricting cardiopulmonary bypass PV on intraoperative red blood cell (RBC) transfusion.
