dubstepped: Does every thread have to devolve into Richard Oliver's diarrhea of the keyboard where he just types and types and takes it away from the topic into mind-numbing arguments over semantics and minor details?
It appears so, doesn't it? Swamp us with tech jargon that even he doesn't understand.
Let's see if I can simplify things...or maybe make it more complicated. I hope not.
There is patient blood management and there is blood management and then there is blood conservation.
When you hear those terms together - patient blood management - what is being managed is the patient's own blood. Methods are used such that the patient's blood is removed, filtered, and then re-infused back into the patient. Or, the patient's blood is salvaged, filtered, and then re-infused back into the patient. Another BSM (blood saving measure) that can be used is EPO treatment (very costly and in most countries, EPO is made from human blood).
Bloodless surgery is essential for patient blood management, but the procedure can, and is, used in conjunction with allogenic blood (as long as you aren't a JW - bloodless surgery patients do get a blood transfusion if they consent to blood and it is required).
Bloodless surgery is always used for open heart surgery - hemodilution was the method developed to make open heart surgery possible and it is used for all patients requiring open heart surgery. But that does not mean that the patient doesn't get blood - it means that the surgical field is bloodless because of the patient's blood being diluted. That is why it was developed - to make it possible to operate on the heart in a bloodless zone.
What happened with that bloodless method was that the WT (HLC) pushed medical doctors to use that same procedure on patients that did not require it. They made them use that method for procedures that did not require that bloodless field. Surgeries, like bowel obstructions in infants etc, which did not require the patient's blood to be drained and diluted, became standard practice for all JW surgeries.
Then there is blood management and blood conservation. This is somewhat different than patient blood management. These practices are common in hospitals - they are practices that reduce the need for allogenic blood but they are not necessarily bloodless surgery - they are just good practice which doctors and hospitals practice on everyone. Reducing the need for allogenic blood transfusions does not mean eliminating them. Patient blood management eliminates the use of allogenic blood. Blood management doesn't necessarily focus on only using the patient's own blood - it just is the adoption of good medical practice and procedures that reduce the need for allogenic blood.
Blood conservation and blood management do not necessarily rely on bloodless surgical methods but patient blood management does.
It is important to know that "bloodless" refers to the bloodless surgical field. It does NOT mean that blood isn't used.
talesin: Bless you, my sister! (If you don't mind me calling you sister, in a very real-world way.)
Haha! Bless you too talesin!