Objective: Although transfusion guidelines have changed considerably over the past two decades, the adoption of patient blood management programs has not been fully realized across hospitals in the United States.

Patients and methods: We evaluated trends in red blood cell (RBC), platelet and plasma transfusion at three Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals from 2000 through 2010.

Results: There were 176,521 hospitalizations in 69,621 patients; of these, 13.6% of hospitalizations involved transfusion of blood products (12.7% RBCs, 1.4% platelets, 3.0% plasma). Transfusion occurred in 25.2% of surgical and 5.3% of medical hospitalizations. Transfusion use peaked in 2002 for surgical hospitalizations and declined afterwards (p<0.001). There was no significant change in transfusion use over time (p=0.126) for medical hospitalizations. In hospitalizations that involved transfusions, there was a 20.3% reduction in the proportion of hospitalizations in which ≥3 units of RBCs were given (from 51.7% to 41.1%; p<0.001) and a 73.6% increase when one RBC unit was given (from 8.0% to 13.8%; p<0.001) from 2000-2010. Of the hospitalizations with RBC transfusion, 9.6% involved the use of one unit over the entire study period. The most common principal diagnoses for medical patients receiving transfusion were anemia, malignancy, heart failure, pneumonia and renal failure. Over time, transfusion utilization increased in patients who were admitted for infection (p=0.009).

Conclusion: Blood transfusions in three VHA hospitals have decreased over time for surgical patients but remained the same for medical patients. Further study examining appropriateness of blood products in medical patients appears necessary.

Keywords: Veterans; plasma; platelets; red blood cells; transfusion.