Conclusion
With anaemia present in a significantly large proportion of the
population presenting for lower limb joint replacement surgery, the
results of this study signify a difference in length of hospital stay
and transfusion rates between non-anaemic patients and anaemic patients.
However, this study has shown that there is no statistical difference
between transfusion rates of anaemic patients optimised pre-operatively
and anaemic patients who were inadvertently not. Furthermore, the
hospital length of stay is in fact longer in anaemic patients who
received corrective treatment compared to the anaemic cohort group who
did not.
It is important to consider the impact of anaemia as a contributing
variable to the outcome as opposed to a stand-alone characteristic,
particularly as there are limitations to this study. These include
taking into consideration other relevant and important factors such as
peri-operative blood loss, patients’ co-morbidities, anaesthetic
techniques and transfusion thresholds for individual patients.
Nevertheless, although patients should ultimately be managed on an
individual basis in contrast to treating their numbers, more research
would be beneficial in ascertaining on how to best manage anaemic
patients to improve and match their outcome to their non-anaemic
counterparts, as well as be able to bring the cost down for the NHS.