Erschienen in:
01.04.2020 | Editorial
Transfusion thresholds: the dangers of guidelines based on randomized controlled trials
verfasst von:
Jean-Louis Vincent
Erschienen in:
Intensive Care Medicine
|
Ausgabe 4/2020
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Excerpt
A task force of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) recently reported its consensus recommendations on optimal blood transfusion practices [
1]. This was a challenging exercise for them: On the one hand, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are supposed to give the most reliable answer to any question related to optimal treatments; on the other hand, RCTs that use a strategy based only on hemoglobin (Hb) thresholds cannot provide a sufficient guide. The authors preferred not to offer a clinical perspective, but rather to review the literature that indicates that strategies based on different Hb concentrations do not result in different mortality rates. …