Internal medicine
-
Autologous blood transfusion is an endorsed blood conservation strategy that has become widely practiced in elective surgical procedures. We review ten years' experience in this arena, along with emerging strategies designed to continue to minimize allogeneic blood exposure but reduce the costs associated with autologous blood procurement. We conclude that point-of-care autologous blood procurement (acute normovolemic hemodilution and intraoperative autologous blood salvage) can replace the predonation of autologous blood in surgical patients when transfusion medicine specialists, anesthesiologists, and surgeons develop a prospective, comprehensive approach to blood conservation.
-
We evaluated the influence of the levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1C) and fasting plasma glucose on the variation in low density lipoprotein (LDL) peak particle size in 210 subjects who were undergoing an annual check-up. Univariate analysis showed that LDL particle size was significantly and positively correlated with high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels, and was inversely correlated with the levels of total plasma cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, HbA1C, and body mass index (BMI). ⋯ The results indicate that HbA1C levels have a significant effect on LDL particle size. This suggests that small LDL particles would be present in subjects with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus regardless of plasma lipid concentrations.