Blood Salvage From Liver Donors: a Feasibility Pilot Study

Blood recovery is a common procedure that limits patient exposure to allogeneic blood products. Blood recovery is usually performed during different types of surgery, including cardiac and vascular surgery, or liver transplantation. Basically, the process utilizes blood cell savers and cell separators and is finalized to auto-transfusion. In our hospital, the blood recovery is carried out with the CATSmart continuous-flow device (Fresenius Kabi AG, Bad Homburg, Germany) that warrants the removal of \> 95% of heparin, potassium, free hemoglobin, and non-emulsifiable lipids. In liver transplantation (LT), before removing the organ from the donor, the blood is usually flushed out of the liver. Nonetheless, in some circumstances, donor blood cells may be transferred to recipients together with the solid organ during graft implantation. This is a feasibility study exploring RBC (red blood cell) concentrates obtained from the blood organ donor to support transfusion requirements in liver recipients. Donor RBC units are produced according to the quality standards recommended by the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines \& HealthCare of the Council of Europe, with equivalent content of Hb and residual leukocytes as standard RBC products.