The efficacy of pre-operative preparation with intravenous iron and/or erythropoietin in anaemic patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery: An observational study

BACKGROUND Pre-operative anaemia and transfusion are common among patients undergoing elective orthopaedic surgery. Application of 'patient blood management' might be the most effective way to reduce both anaemia and transfusion. Pre-operative administration of iron and/or erythropoietin (EPO) is one of the cornerstones of the first pillar of patient blood management, but in a daily clinical setting, efficacy and long-term safety of this measure have not been analysed thoroughly to date. OBJECTIVE To investigate the influence of pre-operative preparation (PREP) of patients with iron and/or EPO on peri-operative transfusion needs and long-term survival. DESIGN Single-centre, retrospective study. SETTING Anaesthesia department, University hospital. INTERVENTIONS Pre-operative preparation with iron and/or EPO versus no preparation. METHODS After approval of our local ethics committee, data of 5518 patients who received total hip or total knee replacement between 2008 and 2014 were included. Patients receiving iron and/or EPO were included in the PREP group, whereas patients without iron and/or EPO were included in the no preparation group. From the full data set, a bias-reduced subset of 662 patients was obtained by means of propensity score-matching to compare peri-operative red blood cell utilisation and long-term survival of patients between groups. RESULTS Patients in the PREP group needed a lower number of units of red blood cells than patients in the no preparation group (0.2 ± 0.8 vs. 0.5 ± 1.3, P 

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