14 April 2017 (Friday) - Haemolysis




This image appeared this morning on a Facebook group I follow with the caption “What causes serum to look like this no matter the draw? Pt urine looks the same and the pt is apparently bleeding out of everywhere
There is intravascular haemolysis going on here. It is *nasty*. I’ve only ever seen it this bad once before when the patient in question had swallowed the contents of a bottle of shampoo and died within hours…

13 April 20107 (Thursday) - Transfusion Evidence Alert email

The transfusion Evidence Alert email came in this morning:

Top 10 new evidence-based publications in Transfusion Medicine
Prehospital hypertonic fluid resuscitation for trauma patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis
de Crescenzo C, Gorouhi F, et al.,  The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 2017
Cell salvage used in scoliosis surgery: is it really effective?
Liu JM, Fu BQ, et al. World Neurosurgery 2017
What is the ideal route of administration of tranexamic acid in TKA? A randomized controlled trial
Lee SY, Chong S, et al. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research 2017

12 April 2017 (Wednesday) - Hb C

This image appeared this morning on a Facebook group I follow. A case of haemoglobin C disease. Target cells, HbC crystals, and nucleated red cells…


12 April 2017 (Wednesday) - Elfn Safe Tea revisited



I’ll just say read this article – it is so easy to overlook or trivialise matters of safety