Blood Transfusions in the Home Sweet Home: How to Avoid a Sour Outcome

Home transfusion: three decades of practice at a tertiary care hospital

“…Expertise in HH and thorough staff training are needed. Health care organizations should decide if they can deliver transfusion at home, guided by patients' needs, characteristics of the health care organization, and detailed cost analysis . Complex hospitals will probably benefit most from HT programs.…”

“…In fact, over the years, some programs have transfused several thousand blood units at home. However, HH programs are sometimes restrained because they cannot transfuse at the patient's home due to safety, cost, or liability concerns . Fear of a hemolytic, anaphylactic, or respiratory reaction that endangers the patient's life is common.…”

“…Home transfusion (HT) can be a key element in HH of complex patients. Sometimes HH programs can not be fully developed because they can not transfuse at the patient's home, mainly due to concerns over patient safety and cost, as were detailed by Benson . Thus, although theoretical benefits of transfusing at home generally outweigh the disadvantages, the specific location for HT being considered is important and the relevant issues need to be addressed before proceeding with implementation.…”

Cancer patients’ willingness to pay for blood transfusions at home: results from a contingent valuation study in a French cancer network

“…More precisely, the main criteria to be eligible for home blood transfusions at home are patient's ability to communicate and to understand information, presence of family/patient cooperation, stable cardiopulmonary status, absence of emergency (the patient must be able to wait 24-48 h for transfusion), acceptable venous access, and absence of history of moderate to severe transfusion reactions [3,8,[48][49][50][51]. Several studies 3 have concluded that once such pre-selection criteria are met, home blood transfusion is not riskier than in-hospital transfusion: Idri et al [3] and Thompson and McKelvey [49] have emphasized a lower prevalence, respectively, of 0.2 and 0.01%, for blood transfusion incidents at home compared with transfusion incidents in health services.…”

Low-intensity induction in acute myeloid leukemia. Always in the patients' best interest?

“…To reduce the OP supportive care visits, home monitoring of labs( 6) and home transfusions is a possibility . Logistically this is difficult as it requires significant resources including home nursing, early and systematic lab collections and close OP monitoring (7). Finally, the implementation of technology for remote visits, remote blood collections and vital sign monitoring( 8) is an important under utilized tool that has the potential to significantly increase PDH, reduce cost and improve patients quality of life.…”