compared to 398 patients who died in the group that received older blood. According to current standards, blood is stored up to 42 days. But many doctors have begun to ask for fresh blood in recent decades, thinking that it's the right thing to do. This is made difficult because of a limited supply and because blood collection agencies and hospital blood banks distributes blood on a "first-in, first-out" basis to avoid wastage. Blood transfusions save lives, affirm the authors. There is no need to worry about the safety of the age of blood routinely used in hospitals.
Old blood is just as good as fresh blood for critical patients. Blood used for transfusion is perishable like any other edible material. But the popular belief about blood that fresh blood better than old blood (up to three weeks) has been a myth now after a research finding published in New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers undertook the Age of Blood Evaluation (ABIE) study, a randomized double-blind trial to compare mortality after 90 days in intensive care patients transfused with either fresh blood (stored for an average of six days) or older blood (stored for an average
of 22 days). A total of 2,430 adults participated in the study, including 1,211 patients in the fresh blood group and 1,219 in the older blood group."Current blood bank practice is to provide patients with the oldest blood available. Some doctors, however, feel that fresh blood is better", said Dr. Paul Hebert, an intensive care physician-scientist at the Centre de recherche du CHUM and professor at the University de Montréal.Specifically,423 patients died within 90 days post-transfusion in the group of patients who received fresh blood,
