This is the podcast, Surgery I C-Rounds.

My name is Jeff Kye.

I'm an associate professor of surgery and director of the Burns Center at Vanderbilt University.

Today, the topic that I want to talk about is issues of blood component therapy.

It's been my observation working with residents and fellows that we order a lot of blood,

and a lot of times our indications for why we're

ordering the blood are very soft at that.

I've done a previous podcast addressing what are the hemoglobin thresholds or triggers

or whether we should even have a set trigger point for transfusion of blood.

But then I see how people will go out about in order various

blood or blood products. It really indicates that we don't have a really strong understanding

of when we would use a unit of blood or when it's more appropriate to use FFP versus platelets

versus something like cryoporcipitate. And that's going to be the topic of today's discussion.

The first issue we're going to talk about is just going over what are the various types of blood products that we use.

The first is whole blood.

Whole blood really doesn't get used much nowadays in a civilian practice.

But certainly in the military setting, we're certainly seeing a lot of reports,

particularly at the meetings of how the military is using whole bloods and having results that they're very satisfied with.

Basically, a unit of donated blood, which is roughly about 520 milliliters, contains both a unit of plasma and a unit of cells.

Whole blood can be stored for about five weeks. Factors five and factor seven are labile and are significantly decreased after seven days.

The indications for whole blood, particularly if used fresh, is in resuscitation of the exeguinating patient.

It's not really indicated currently in most civilian settings for, quote quote the routine transfusion of blood,

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