Patient Blood Management Is Not About Blood Transfusion: It Is About Patients’ Outcomes
Patient Blood Management (PBM) is “the timely application of evidence-based medical and surgical concepts designed to maintain hemoglobin concentration, optimize hemostasis and minimize blood loss in an effort to improve patient outcome”1. The definition presented by the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management (SABM), as well as several other definitions of PBM, have moved away from placing the focus on reducing the use of blood components to the development of a multidisciplinary and multimodal strategy centred on patients’ outcome. Reducing transfusions might be a means, but it is certainly not an end. Thus, PBM has moved from a product-centred approach to a patient-centred approach.
