Tidsskrift for den Norske lægeforening : tidsskrift for praktisk medicin, ny række
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Blood conservation in open heart surgery has become mandatory in order to reduce the risk of viral contamination, and because of limited resources. We have performed 100 consecutive coronary artery bypass operations (13 women/87 men, aged 33-73 years, mean 58 years) without using homologous blood. A strict blood conservation programme was applied, with removal of autologous blood prebypass for retransfusion at the end of surgery, retransfusion of the heart-lung machine content to the patient, and autotransfusion of shed mediastinal blood in the postoperative period. ⋯ Five patients received 1-2 units of fresh frozen plasma because of coagulopathy. Mean hemoglobin was 12.0 g/100 ml and mean hematocrit was 36% at discharge from hospital. Elective coronary artery bypass surgery can be performed with little or no transfusions of homologous blood.
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Tidsskr. Nor. Laegeforen. · Feb 1990
[Pharmacies' information pamphlets--what use are they to the patients?].
Information pamphlets about certain drugs on prescription have been distributed to patients by Norwegian pharmacies since 1985. A questionnaire distributed to 500 patients, answered by 48.2%, showed that most patients liked to receive the pamphlets and 85.5% found them useful. However, it was difficult to evaluate the influence of the pamphlets on the patients compliance with instructions on how to use the drug. ⋯ The study showed that physicians informed the patients more about the effects (67.2%) than about the side-effects (49.4%) of drugs. Only 47.7% of the patients had received the pamphlets earlier. However, this percentage varied for the three participating pharmacies, being 20.2, 62.2 and 78.0% respectively.