Blood loss is a leading contributor to trauma-related mortality and transfusion requirements. For trauma patients arriving at the emergency department (ED), hemorrhage is the leading cause of death within the first hour, according to StatPearls. Additionally, within the first 24 hours at the ED, nearly 50% of deaths result from hemorrhage. Trauma requires significant resource utilization, with trauma patients using roughly 70% of all the blood transfused at a trauma center.

In lieu of this, the expense of acquiring, screening, transporting, and storing donated blood becomes an issue. Autotransfusion can reduce costs and provide readily available blood in trauma wards and surgical centers. It’s safe for procedures across specialities, even for many cancer surgeries and in the case of obstetric hemorrhage. With cell saver technology, hospitals can improve outcomes and relieve the cost burden of donated blood.

The Expense and Utilization of Donated Blood

According to Statista, the median price for a single unit of leukoreduced RBC blood was $226 in 2023, which does not account for any other related expenses (such as transport or storage). The Red Cross reveals that one car accident victim alone may require up to 100 units of blood. Thousands of dollars in transfusions can add up quickly. StatPearls cites a study in England where a hospital discovered that 12% of its total expenditures could be traced back to transfusions in trauma patients.

Worse still, many of these costs are largely preventable. A review of 494 published articles in Transfusion Medicine Reviews revealed allogeneic blood transfusions to be inappropriate up to 60% of the time. According to Frontiers in Medicine, an assessment of red blood cell (RBC) transfusions at a hospital over a six year study period found a cost of over $11 million due to inappropriate transfusions. The authors stated that inappropriate transfusions increased hospital costs by an average of nearly $10,000 compared to non-transfused patients. Moreover, the inappropriately transfused patients had longer hospital stays in comparison (10.6 days vs. 6.7 days).

These findings highlight a key limitation of allogeneic transfusion: it often relies on estimated blood loss and fixed transfusion thresholds, which can lead to over‑transfusion. In contrast, autotransfusion replaces only the patient’s actual red blood cells lost during hemorrhage, reducing unnecessary exposure to donor blood, lowering costs, and mitigating risks associated with prolonged hospitalization, infection, and readmission.

The Cost Savings and Safety of Autotransfusion

A study in Healthcare, conducted in Australia, found that allogenic RBC transfusions were “associated with significant downstream adverse outcomes and related costs.” It confirmed that intraoperative cell salvage “provides immunological benefits, improves outcomes, and reduces blood product requirements.”

Autotransfusion has been proven safe for a wide variety of procedures, saving time and money as well as speeding recovery time. This is the case even in conditions where urgency and immune function are critical, such as trauma, obstetric emergencies, and cancer surgeries:

• Life-saving transfusion is necessary in 5 to 8% of trauma cases. With no need for cross-matching, autotransfusion returns the patient’s blood back to them in three to five minutes.
• Research shows that autotransfusion is suitable for emergent obstetric surgeries such as ruptured ectopic pregnancy, planned or emergent cesarean delivery and cases involving obstetric hemorrhage. Autotransfusion devices are FDA labeled without exclusion for obstetrics. In 2011, a published review of 1,665 cases reported no adverse events where salvaged blood was re-infused during a variety of obstetrical procedures.
• A meta-analysis published in 2022 found that the use of autotransfusion in cancer surgery is not associated with an increased risk of cancer recurrence. Additionally, the use of ATS in combination with a leukocyte depletion filter (LDF) was reported to be safe for many surgical oncology procedures. Analysis also indicated that outcomes were similar to or better in patients receiving intraoperative cell salvage (IOCS) during cancer surgery compared to patients with allogeneic blood transfusion or non-transfused patients.

Expand Your Autotransfusion Services with SpecialtyCare

At SpecialtyCare, our mission is to make surgery safer, and that includes providing you with the resources to improve outcomes and reduce costs with autotransfusion services. We can place highly trained technicians at your hospital or surgery center who can integrate seamlessly with your team and help you expand the use of autotransfusion across a variety of procedures. From the emergency department to elective surgeries, increased utilization of autotransfusion can offer more benefits to your patients while reducing the cost burden of donated blood. Contact us today to learn more!