Home |  Elder Rights |  Health |  Pension Watch |  Rural Aging |  Armed Conflict |  Aging Watch at the UN  

Mission  |  Contact Us  |  Internships  |  Donate Now!  

back

Giving blood transfusions to elderly heart attack patients who are anemic appears to reduce their death rates within the next month, according to a study published on Oct. 25 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, conducted at Yale, involved reviewing the records of 78,974 elderly heart patients. The researchers said they were surprised at how much anemia they found — just over 40 percent of the patients had low red blood cell counts.

The anemia was linked to higher death rates over the 30 days after hospitalization: the most anemic patients were more than twice as likely to die in the month after a heart attack as those who were not anemic. Despite this risk, only about a quarter of patients with significant anemia received transfusions, the researchers said.

The study found that patients who did receive transfusions appeared to benefit significantly, especially those who were more severely anemic.

As a result, the researchers called for a more aggressive approach to using transfusions.