Retrograde Autologous Priming During Cardiopulmonary Bypass Reduces Blood Transfusion Rate in Adult Cardiac Surgery: A Prospective Randomized Clinical Trial

Retrograde autologous priming (RAP) is a non-drug blood protection method to reduce blood dilution by lowering the amount of crystal liquid priming. But there is no unified blood transfusion standard. Therefore, we conducted a prospective randomized trial to determine whether RAP can reduce blood transfusion during and after cardiac surgery in adults. 120 adult patients scheduled for cardiac surgery were included.

In this experiment, the lowest HCT value during CPB in the study group was significantly higher and only 20% of patients received a blood transfusion. The overall transfusion rate and intraoperative transfusion volume of homologous PRBC units in the RAP group were lower than those in the standard priming group.