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April 18, 2000
Famed surgeon speaks in favor of avoiding blood transfusions
LEEDS, ENGLAND—“If you ever operate on a doctor, they will not be hammering on your door wanting a blood transfusion, that is for sure. They go to great lengths to avoid one, and I would,” said Mr. Stephen Pollard, a leading transplant surgeon in Britain. “Apart from a financial savings, patients are much happier without it. Patients get better more quickly if they don't require a blood transfusion.”
Mr. Pollard’s remarks followed a unique bloodless kidney transplant at St. James Hospital in Leeds on March 10, 2000. Mr. Alf Hoyle, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, was given new life by his wife in an operation in which her kidney was transplanted to him.
“Three things have come together to make this unique,” said a hospital spokesman quoted in The Herald of Glasgow, Scotland. “It was a bloodless operation, it was a non-related donor between husband and wife, and the couple are Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Although Hoyle’s case was unusual, it is an example of a growing trend in medical care—the use of medical and surgical techniques that avoid donor blood. Around 100 similar procedures have been carried out at the St. James Hospital. These pioneering operations done in Leeds and elsewhere are pushing surgical science forward for the benefit of all.
A sign of the international interest in nonblood medicine is the First European Congress on Bloodless Health Care to be held in Geneva on May 11-12, 2000. About 1,000 physicians are expected to attend the congress, where they will learn how to accommodate a growing number of requests for bloodless treatment.
“Avoidance of allogeneic transfusion is becoming the new gold standard of care,” according to an announcement published by the congress’ Scientific Committee. “With transfusion practice still varying widely in Europe, both nationally and internationally, clinicians need easy access to a broad overview of blood conservation methods and alternatives to allogeneic blood transfusion to offer this kind of quality care.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses accept medical treatment for themselves and their children, but refuse blood transfusions because Christians are commanded to ‘abstain from blood.’ (Acts 15:20) The Bible does not comment on organ transplants; this is a matter of patient choice.
Contact: J. R. Brown, telephone: (718) 560-5600