{"id":3076,"date":"2015-03-25T14:39:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T18:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/52.229.122.34\/en\/?p=3076"},"modified":"2021-02-17T12:47:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T17:47:27","slug":"frequent-blood-donor-finds-another-way-to-keep-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/uncategorized\/frequent-blood-donor-finds-another-way-to-keep-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"Frequent blood donor finds another way to keep giving"},"content":{"rendered":"

After donating blood more than 50 times, a research study allowed Tony Brett to contribute to the blood system in a different way.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tony Brett will never know exactly why he ended up in a coma in The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Intensive Care Unit in January 2014, but doctors believe his problems may have started the previous September, when a mosquito bite on his leg became infected and refused to heal. They suspect the infection entered his blood stream and spread throughout his body, resulting in a potentially deadly condition called septic shock.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A team of doctors, nurses and other health professionals saved his life, but he lost a significant chunk of his leg and required several blood transfusions. When he awoke from his 11-day coma, he learned his wife had enrolled him in a research study comparing standard blood for transfusions (stored for an average of three weeks) with fresher blood (stored for seven days or less).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI was very glad that my wife had enrolled me in this study,\u201d said Brett. \u201cNot only did blood transfusions help save my life, they also helped to keep my mother alive, as she required many blood transfusions over the years due to a blood disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The study was a randomized, controlled, blinded trial, so Brett did not know if he had received the older blood or the fresher blood. Now he knows it didn’t matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The results, recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine,<\/em> show that, contrary to popular belief, fresh blood was not any better for severely ill patients than older blood. (See summary in this media release<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been standard practice to store blood for up to 42 days before a transfusion, but laboratory studies and observational studies in humans had started to suggest that fresher blood might be better for patients,\u201d said Dr. Dean Fergusson, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa who co-led the international trial.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cOur clinical trial was the first to rigorously compare fresh blood with older blood in severely ill adults and we found that it made no difference in survival,\u201d said Dr. Alan Tinmouth, another study co-leader who is also a hematologist and scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. \u201cMany doctors had started requesting fresher blood for their patients and calling for changes to the blood supply system, but now we know that we don\u2019t have to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The results and the study itself are reassuring to Brett. “It is great to see that people are doing rigorous research to make sure that our blood supply is as safe and effective as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Research at The Ottawa Hospital involves more than 1,700 scientists, clinician-investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff who are working to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease. Support our research. Give to the <\/em>Tender Loving Research<\/em><\/a> campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After donating blood more than 50 times, a research study allowed Tony Brett to contribute to the blood system in a different way. Tony Brett will never know exactly why he ended up in a coma in The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Intensive Care Unit in January 2014, but doctors believe his problems may have started the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":3078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}