Brain Surgery Possible Without Blood Transfusion

by apostate 5 Replies latest jw friends

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  apostate

  Brain Surgery Possible Without Blood Transfusion
  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010725/hl/blood_1.html

  NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Patients who object to blood transfusions for religious reasons may still be able to safely undergo brain or spinal surgery, researchers report. In a new study, patients who refused blood transfusions for religious reasons fared almost as well as ``control'' patients undergoing similar procedures who did have blood transfusions.
  Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden by their religion to receive medical treatment that involves the administration of blood transfusions or blood products, even where such treatment could be lifesaving. But these patients sometimes accept the use of blood-free products called volume expanders--solutions that are mixed with their own blood to make up for blood lost during surgery--or agree to allow their own blood to be collected and ``recycled'' during the procedure with a device known as a cell saver.
  Dr. Silke Suess of the Free University of Berlin, Germany and colleagues looked at the outcomes of neurosurgery performed on 103 Jehovah's Witnesses and 515 control patients who underwent similar surgeries. Most of the patients had brain or spinal diseases, such as a brain tumor or herniated disc, although a few had head injuries.
  Blood loss during surgery was 35% lower in spinal surgery and 40% lower in brain surgery for Jehovah's Witnesses than for the other patients, suggesting that surgeons took more steps to limit and control bleeding during the surgery.
  On average, it took surgeons 18 minutes longer to perform a spinal surgery and 37 minutes longer to perform cranial surgery on a Jehovah's Witness patient compared with a patient who did not object to blood transfusions.
  However, six patients (4%) in the Jehovah's Witness group did suffer blood loss sufficient to require extended time in the intensive care unit and more days convalescing. In comparison, about 8% to 20% of the control patients experienced significant blood loss, and 15 of those patients required a blood transfusion.
  On average, Jehovah's Witnesses spent 15% more time in the hospital than the control group did, the authors report in the August issue of the journal Neurosurgery.
  ``Neurosurgery traditionally has been very bloody. It does not have to be so,'' Dr. Patrick J. Kelly of the New York Medical Center in New York City writes in an accompanying commentary.
  ``Minimally invasive procedures and attention to (stopping blood loss) can reduce intraoperative blood loss considerably,'' he added.
  ``If we are to perform surgery in (Jehovah's Witness) patients, we must play by their rules, which, in my opinion, are not as onerous as some may believe,'' Kelly concludes.
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  Maximus

  I don't intend to write an essay on this, but it's one of those DUH-uh! stories.
  Brain surgery possible without blood. Well, gol-leeeee!

  I read this to a neurosurgeon friend, who observes the goal of every good surgeon is meticulous technique that prevents blood loss and makes transfusion unnecessary.

  Here is the real concern, and where JW rules get "onerous":

  What does the trauma surgeon do with a child who is bleeding to death from an accident?

  What does the surgeon do with a pregnant woman who is exsanguinating, or bleeding to death?

  What does the hematologist do to help a child dying of cancer who needs platelets?

  The sleight of hand required for keeping blood in a circuit can cause death in itself. A specific case: a child in India was recently killed inadvertently by her surgeon who attempted to placate HLC instructions on keeping blood in circuit; in the process a fatal air embolism was created.

  Nothing new in this Reuters story.

  But JW leadership will spin it this way: if only those careless doctors would do it the way we tell them, they wouldn't have to use blood. We're not so bad after all. Our rules are not onerous at all!

  I'll let someone else follow up, because my blood pressure is up.

  Maximus
• 

  Esmeralda

  I can follow it up for you, Maximus.

  My father had a brain aneurysm in June. He needed a craniotomy and clip surgery to save his life.

  My JW family upheld his wishes and refused blood. He didn't need it, he was lucky enough to have the director of the neurosurgery department at a huge university hospital to perform his surgery. He survived.

  Twelve days later, my mother in law, (not a JW) had an abdominal aneurysm and bled out into her belly. She lost her entire blood volume, then from the first hospital ER, as they pumped more into her
  on the helicopter: as they pumped more into her as they put her in and through surgery. All in all she lost her blood volume four times.

  It took 23 pints of red cells, 7 of fresh frozen plasma and one of platelets to save her life. There is no doubt that if not for the blood, I would have been visiting her grave and not her hospital bedside.

  One of the first things she said to me when she got off of her respirator and was able to speak was this: "It's a good thing that your father didn't have what I had, or things would be very different right now."

  Still, my JW family refuses to accept that she needed blood at all. They insist she 'could have survived without it'. Excuse my language, but BULLSHIT! They refuse to accept that blood can and does save lives, they refuse to accept that the WTS keeps watering down the issue as people keep dying: fraction this, byproduct that, it means NOTHING. No one in my family would take blood, because they say that regardless of the society's 'new light' that it's wrong. That it should be poured out onto the ground once it's bled out.

  Interesting, though, that none of them batted an eye when my Dad, and my sister who is his patient advocate, agreed to the use of the cel saver machine if need be. Doesn't sound like pouring it out on the ground to me.

  It's all bullshit. People are dying because those old rotting, decomposing men in Brooklyn would rather let them than admit that they screwed up.

  It sickens me to no end.

  Okay, I am going to leave it here before my blood pressure goes up any more myself.

  *hugs* to you Maximus...

  love
  Es
• 

  Seeker

  Funny, when I saw the heading "Brain Surgery Without Blood", I thought Fred Hall was going in for an enhancement operation...

  On a serious note, this quote from Reuters is odd:

  Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden by their religion to receive medical treatment that involves the administration of blood transfusions or blood products

  That's wrong, even though most JWs wouldn't be aware of this. As we know, many blood products ARE acceptable now, in fractional form. Now, is Reuters writing out of the same ignorance that keeps JWs in the dark, or was the reporter just passing along what the JW spokesman said? If the latter, was this a deliberate deception, or just ignorance on the part of the spokesman?
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  wondering alot

  I just watched one of the WTBST's video's on Blood. It said the same thing that certain blood factions are acceptable. It also said that certain products made from blood factions are also acceptable for JW's.
  The whole video had only one scriptual reference. The rest was a petty PR production. What was illustrated was surgery that was planned or elective operations. There was no mention of emergency surgery. I don't even remember them mentioning that someone could die if they didn't have blood.

  They never mentioned the WTBTS's old position that vacinations are totally unnecessary and the eqivalence of poluting ones body; or that transplants should be considered canabalism. No surprise there.
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  Flip

  Brain Surgery Possible Without Blood Transfusion

  "...Brain Surgery Without a Diploma...", now, that would be newsworthy.

  Flip