International Research Organization Responds to Recent Studies Purporting to Show That Transfusion of Older Red Blood Cells Leads to Gr...( CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom May 27 ...),Health

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, May 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion (BEST) Collaborative will be presenting its concerns regarding the scientific validity and medical implications of several recent papers purporting to show that transfusion of older units of Red Blood Cells leads to greater risk. The organization will highlight its position during the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) meeting of the Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (ACBSA) on May 30, 2008, at the Hilton Rockville Hotel, in Rockville, Md.

The BEST Collaborative is an international research organization that works collaboratively to explore ways to improve transfusion-related services through standardization of analytic techniques, development of new procedures and execution of clinical trials in hemotherapy. The position of BEST will be presented by Larry Dumont, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire; and co-leader of BEST's Clinical Studies Team.

"Several retrospective studies have suggested a correlation between transfusion of older Red Blood Cells and poorer outcomes in certain clinical settings," said Dr. Dumont. "Such studies display several important shortcomings in their assumptions, designs and reporting."

In particular, the BEST Collaborative comments will focus on the recent New England Journal of Medicine article written by Colleen Gorman Koch, MD, and colleagues, noting the study had several key inadequacies, including:

1. The groups receiving units of different storage periods appeared not at all comparable.

The groups differed in many important clinical features, including the frequency of left ventricular dysfunction, prior myocardial infarction, mitral valve regurgitation, body size, severity of heart disease, and the presence of peripheral vascular disease. These suggest that the patient groups were not simi
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