Blood emergency? The haematologist: “Doctors often ask it just for peace of mind”
Mazza: "The recent scandal in Great Britain shows that you can even die from donated money"
ROME – “Sometimes there isn’t even a need for blood and maybe the doctors ask for it for peace of mind rather than for actual necessity and this also happens quite often. They consider it prudence, it’s a form of protection for themselves on a legal level: to be able to say that the blood was there. Most people accept transfusions.” Patrizio Mazza, oncohaematologist for many years at Moscati/SS Annunziata in Taranto and who now has a “widespread” clinic as he calls it: “I go where they call me”, responded to Dire on the blood emergency which comes back almost like a ritual appointment every summer.
THE DATA OF 2023
The 2023 data released by the National Blood Center show that “on the collection of plasma, crucial for the production of plasma-derived drugs, Italy shows a marked dependence on foreign countries. In 2023 the collection of plasma stood at only 15.3 kg per 1,000 inhabitants, below the self-sufficiency threshold of 18 kg per person. Furthermore, significant disparities in plasma collection between the Italian regions are highlighted”. What operations is blood needed for? “It is used for the injured policeman who is bleeding – explains the doctor thinking of the case of Christian Di Martino – unless he doesn’t want it, or for interventions that don’t go the right way, or for a road accident that leads to the rupture of the spleen” . But for diseases, for example, such as “acute myeloid leukemia, especially in a young person, who comes to the treatment with 5 hemoglobin, it can be done without but you have to be very timely, because even if things go well it takes 4- 5 weeks before he responds. Even a transplant or autotransplant can be done without blood. It must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES AND TRANSFUSIONS
Many cases followed by Mazza, of patients for example Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse transfusions, have gone well because there are ways to increase hemoglobin: “if the patient has his own blood it is best guarantee”. How you do it? Administering iron and erythropoietin to stimulate the marrow: “I have taken young people to very large operations making the hemoglobin reach 15-16, for the elderly who have a less responsive marrow it can be more difficult”.
THE SCANDAL IN GREAT BRITAIN
As for the appeal to donors, Mazza thinks that in the summer the issue is mainly one of distraction: “on holiday you think less about donating” this could be one reason. In some countries the donation is paid and the risk of importing from abroad “is supposed to be tested”, he adds. Despite the recent scandal in Great Britain, like the Italian one that broke out in the 1990s, they have shown that one can even die from ‘donated’ blood.