Nation's Blood Research Articles

The Use of Packed Red Blood Cells

To the Editor.— I believe that many transfusion experts and public health planners will strongly disagree with Dr Grindon's article. Proper use of known community blood resources requires that all units of blood collected be centrifuged promptly to harvest the labile blood components. This, in turn, requires that surgeons must be educated in the safe use of PRBC intraoperatively, since in most communities, 60% of the blood use is intraoperative. Surgeons can and must use PRBC for the average surgical patient when less than 2,000 ml of the blood volume is going to be lost. Failure to implement a full PRBC program has resulted in a continuing nationwide shortage of blood components as well as prohibitively high blood-fraction costs. Unless better use is made of the nation's blood supply, we are inviting restrictive government intervention—and it seems certain that such intervention will prove far more uncomfortable to surgeons than the

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:The Principles and Practice of Blood Grouping. A. G. Erskine.NHLI's Blood Resource Studies. Volume I, Supply and Use of the Nation's Blood ResourceNational Heart, Blood Vessel, Lung, and Blood Program: Volume I, National Heart and Lung Institute SummaryCode of Federal Regulations

Book Reviews and Abstracts

Book reviewed in this article:Syllabus of Laboratory Examinations in Clinical Diagnosis. Lot B. Page and Perry J. CulverThe Chemistry of Heredity. Stephen Zamenhof. Springfield, Ill., Charles C ThomasAn Outline of Chemical Genetics. Bernard S. Strauss.Biochemistry of Human Genetics. A Symposium edited for the CIBA Foundation by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and C. M. O'Connor.The Nation's Blood Transfusion Facilities and Services. Joint Blood Council