Iatrogenic anemia/Twenty-five million liters of blood into the sewer : comment

With great interest, we have read the articles by Stefanini [1] and Levi [2] on the waste of patient blood that is left over after laboratory testing. Especially in vulnerable patient populations that are subjected to frequent laboratory testing, iatrogenic anaemia can become a significant problem. A patient population that definitely meets these criteria is the population that is cared for at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Based on data from our laboratory information system and data from observation of the practice of blood collection on the ICU (see below), we could calculate that during the average ICU stay of 3.5 days, 140 ml of blood is lost for laboratory purposes.