Anaes · Perioperative medicine
Intraoperative cell salvage
Also known as ICS cell saver · Autologous blood salvage · AAGBI cell salvage
Exam-pass intraoperative cell salvage: indications, wash pathway, contraindications, obstetrics/malignancy nuances, coagulopathy after wash, and PBM integration.
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10 MCQs with explanations
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Meet the patient
A 68-year-old woman is listed for a revision total hip replacement. She is one of Jehovah's Witnesses and will accept a continuous-circuit cell saver but will not accept bank blood. Expected loss is well over a litre, so the machine is not a convenience — it is the margin between a safe operation and a dangerous one.[1]
Two questions decide every cell-salvage stem: when do I set it up? — before the blood is on the floor, whenever loss or refusal makes allogeneic transfusion likely — and what actually comes back? — washed autologous red cells, and nothing else. Hold those two and the whole topic arranges itself.[1][2]
You have read the opening of this topic. The complete unit — every section and its primary-source references — is part of the Anaesthesia fellowship atlas.
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- [1]Klein AA, Bailey CR, Charlton AJ, et al. Association of Anaesthetists guidelines: cell salvage for peri-operative blood conservation 2018 Anaesthesia, 2018.PMID 29989144
- [2]Ashworth A, Klein AA Cell salvage as part of a blood conservation strategy in anaesthesia Br J Anaesth, 2010.PMID 20802228
- [3]Mazer CD, Whitlock RP, Fergusson DA, et al. Restrictive or Liberal Red-Cell Transfusion for Cardiac Surgery N Engl J Med, 2017.PMID 29130845