The Impact of Perioperative Viscoelastic Test Application on Blood Product Usage and Outcome in Cardiac Surgery; Regional Cardiac Surgery Center Experience

Objective: Thromboelastography (TEG) is a diagnostic modality that gives information about coagulation. Despite all blood-preserving precautions in open heart surgery there are blood losses and the use of blood and blood products becomes inevitable. TEG is mostly not available in every center and habits, trends and clinical experience in blood use create the possibility of causing unnecessary use of blood and blood products. In this study, it was aimed to determine the effect of the use of thromboelastography on the use of blood and blood products in cardiac surgery. Methods: Two hundred patients between 18-70 years old who underwent open heart surgery were included in the study. After the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), the cases were confirmed to have an Activated Clotting Time (ACT) value in the range of 120-150 sec after protamine administration. In 100 patients in the TEG group, the coagulation status was evaluated with TEG and it was decided how to apply blood and blood product use. Blood and blood product use was applied to 100 patients in the control group based on clinical experience and foresight. The total amount of blood and blood product used, fluid balance, need for inotropics, mechanical ventilator time, complications, duration of intensive care and discharge times were recorded. Results: Use of Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP) at the after CPB in the TEG group was statistically significantly lower than that of the control group FFP (p<0.05). Postoperative FFP and postoperative platelet use in the study group were statistically significantly lower than in the postoperative FFP and postoperative platelet values of the control group (p <0.05). Conclusion: The use of thromboelastography is a very useful monitoring in terms of reducing FFP use after CPB and reducing FFP and platelet usage in the postoperative period. In this way, the unnecessary use of blood and blood products can be prevented.