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Perioperative- Patient Blood Management (P-PBM)

Blood management plays a crucial role in ensuring patient safety and improving surgical outcomes.

Our focus on Patient Blood Management (PBM) aims to improve patient outcomes while saving healthcare resources and reducing costs. WFSA focuses on Perioperative-Patient Blood Management (P-PBM), the management of a patient’s blood before, during and after surgery.

Understanding PBM

Patient blood management addresses the problems of anaemia, blood loss and coagulopathy. It is a patient-centred, systematic, evidence-based approach to improve patient outcomes by managing a patient’s own blood through diagnosis and aetiology-specific treatment of anaemia and preserving the patient’s own blood by minimizing blood loss and bleeding while promoting patient safety and empowerment (WHO, 2021).

As well as improving patient outcomes analysis shows that it is a cost-effective resource efficient process that reduces dependency on risky and complicated transfusions.

Read: What is PBM and why it is so important?

The P-PBM principles

WFSA’s P-PBM initiatives are built around three core pillars:

  • Detection and management of anaemia and iron deficiency – PBM aims to diagnose and treat anaemia effectively before surgery.
  • Minimisation of blood loss and optimisation of coagulation – promote surgical techniques that reduce invasive procedures and reduce intraoperative blood loss.
  • Improvement and optimisation of physiological tolerance to anaemia – strategies include optimizing oxygen delivery and implementing restrictive transfusion strategies to ensure that transfusions are only given when absolutely necessary.

Santa Cruz Declaration

WFSA supports the WHO Call to Action to develop and implement sustainable national PBM policies. As part of this work, WFSA Member Societies launched and endorsed the Santa Cruz Declaration: A Global PBM Consensus. By endorsing the declaration, organisations add their voice to a growing global movement to improve patient outcomes, preserve scarce resources and reduce avoidable reliance on blood transfusion. We continue to invite organisations across the surgical and perioperative fields to endorse the Santa Cruz Declaration and strengthen this global movement.

Read more about endorsing the Santa Cruz Declaration

Meet the team

The WFSA P-PBM Steering Group oversees the strategic direction of the whole WFSA P-PBM project. The Steering Group is co-chaired by WFSA President Prof Daniela Filipescu, and PBM expert Dr Fredy Ariza. WFSA President-Elect Dr Carolina Haylock Loor, and educational expert Dr Jolene Moore are also part of the group.

At the project’s outset, the Steering Group recruited 29 Patient Blood Management experts and proponents to form the WFSA Working Group, who are primarily responsible for writing the P-PBM course content.

Find out more about the WFSA Steering Group and P-PBM Collaborators

P-PBM Blog

Further resources

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