Excessive Blood Drawing for Laboratory Tests

To the Editor: I was recently hospitalized in a major university hospital for the Guillain–Barre syndrome. While there, I had blood drawn, usually twice a day. During my two weeks in the intensive care unit, my hematocrit dropped from 43 to 31. As chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine at a well-known children's teaching hospital, I was shocked at the amount of blood drawn for my tests. I asked the phlebotomist to draw less blood, but she refused, saying that her instructions had to be followed. While I was completely paralyzed, I began to think about why hospitals draw . . .