C David Mazer, Richard P Whitlock, Dean A Fergusson, Judith Hall, Emilie Belley-Cote, Katherine Connolly, Boris Khanykin, Alexander J Gregory, Étienne de Médicis, Shay McGuinness, Alistair Royse, François M Carrier, Paul J Young, Juan C Villar, Hilary P Grocott, Manfred D Seeberger, Stephen Fremes, François Lellouche, Summer Syed, Kelly Byrne, Sean M Bagshaw, Nian C Hwang, Chirag Mehta, Thomas W Painter, Colin Royse, Subodh Verma, Gregory M T Hare, Ashley Cohen, Kevin E Thorpe, Peter Jüni, Nadine Shehata
BACKGROUND: The effect of a restrictive versus liberal red-cell transfusion strategy on clinical outcomes in patients undergoing cardiac surgery remains unclear. METHODS: In this multicenter, open-label, noninferiority trial, we randomly assigned 5243 adults undergoing cardiac surgery who had a European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) I of 6 or more (on a scale from 0 to 47, with higher scores indicating a higher risk of death after cardiac surgery) to a restrictive red-cell transfusion threshold (transfuse if hemoglobin level was <7...
November 30, 2017: New England Journal of Medicine