Centrifugation of salvaged pump blood is useful in reducing the amount of heparin re-infused into the patient

Abstract

Conservation of blood and blood products are of major concern in clinical practice today. All blood salvaged from the extracorporeal circuit at the end of cardiopulmonary bypass should be returned to the patient. We propose the use of a simple and inexpensive centrifuge machine to reduce the amount of heparin from the residual pump blood re-infused to the patient. At the same time, the re-infused blood is concentrated. Sixteen patients were prospectively included in this study. The residual pump blood was collected from the bypass circuit and spun at 4000 rpm for 7 min on the Jouan GR 4.22 machine. The clear upper supernatant was discarded and the remaining concentrated red cells re-infused back to the patient. The heparin concentration and full blood counts of both layers were measured. We found that this method was useful in removing excessive heparin and avoiding the need for additional protamine.