An Audit on the Quality of Intraoperative Cell Salvage at Flinders Medical Centre

Abstract

The National Blood Authority recommends that a quality assurance (QA) program is attached to intraoperative cell salvage (ICS) use but does not define quality indicators (QI) for benchmarking. Guidelines in the USA provide QI values for haemoglobin (Hb >15 g/dL), plasma free haemoglobin (PFHb <0.1g/L), and heparin concentrations (<0.5 IU/mL) for processed blood. The current QA program records volume and haematocrit of processed blood determined by the ICS systems. This audit evaluated the potential for improvement of this institution’s QA program by including additional benchmarks for processed blood quality.