Study Using Plasma for Patients Requiring Emergency Surgery
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2012-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Information on the management of casualties from the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and
Iraq has brought in to question the traditional approach to blood transfusion in hemorrhaging
patients. Present recommendations for when to transfuse plasma products is when coagulation
tests become abnormal. The proposed trial will investigate whether the more aggressive plasma
transfusion strategies as advocated from researchers based on the Central Asian conflicts is
valid. Since a study to determine the full impact of an altered plasma transfusion practice
would require thousands of patients, a feasibility trial is appropriate and is being
proposed. The hypotheses are thus:
Primary Hypothesis- A multicentre trial that investigates the earlier use of plasma in
patients with hemorrhagic shock going for emergency surgery will be feasible.
Secondary Hypotheses- The early use of a universal donor blood plasma (AB+ plasma) in
patients with shock due to blood loss (i.e. hemorrhagic) going for emergency surgery will
reduce overall exposure to the total number of blood donor products (so-called allogeneic
blood exposure). A reduction in allogeneic blood exposure would then reduce the total number
of blood transfusion-related complications. The early use of this plasma product is safe and
will not increase the incidence of blood clotting or other transfusion-related complications.