Doctors Do A Blood Transfusion For The Involvement Of Patients In Trials Of New Cancer Drugs

Doctors Do A Blood Transfusion For The Involvement Of Patients In Trials Of New Cancer Drugs.
Canadian researchers rephrase they've noticed a worrying trend: Cancer doctors ordering superfluous blood transfusions so that critically ill patients can qualify for drug trials. In a letter published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers surface on three cases during the last year in Toronto hospitals in which physicians ordered blood transfusions that could pass the patients appear healthier for the lone purpose of getting them into clinical trials for chemotherapy drugs. The practice raises both medical and right concerns, the authors say.

And "On the physician side, you want to do the best for your patients," said co-author Dr Jeannie Callum, principal of transfusion medicine and tissue banks at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. "If these patients have no other options communist to them, you want to do everything you can to get them into a clinical trial. But the dogged is put in a horrible position, which is, 'If you want in to the trial, you have to have the transfusion.' But the transfusion only carries risks to them".

A solely serious complication of blood transfusions is transfusion-related severe lung injury, which occurs in about one in 5000 transfusions and usually requires the patient to go on life support, said Callum. But barring the potential for physical harm, enrolling very sick common man in a clinical trial can also skew the study's results - making the drug perform worse than it might in patients whose plague was not as far along.

The unnecessary transfusions were discovered by the Toronto Transfusion Collaboration, a consortium of six urban area hospitals formed to carefully review all transfusions as a means of improving patient safety. At this point, it's ridiculous to know how often transfusions are ordered just to get patients into clinical trials. When she contacted colleagues around the humankind to find out if the practice is widespread, all replied that they didn't sift the reasons for ordering blood transfusions and so would have no way of knowing.

Newborns Jaundice And Cerebral Palsy

Newborns Jaundice And Cerebral Palsy.
Newborns with significant jaundice are not plausible to exhibit a rare and life-threatening type of cerebral palsy if American Academy of Pediatrics' treatment guidelines are followed, according to a different study. Jaundice is yellowing of the eyes and skin due to high levels of the liver-produced pigment bilirubin. In most cases, jaundice develops mid newborns because their liver is too rudimentary to break down the pigment quickly enough. Usually, this condition resolves without treatment.

Some babies, however, must endure phototherapy. Exposure to special lights changes bilirubin into a compound that can be excreted from the body, according to the researchers. If phototherapy fails, a way called exchange transfusion may be required. During this invasive procedure, the infant's blood is replaced with benefactor blood. Recommendations for exchange transfusions are based on bilirubin level, the ripen of the infant and other risk factors for brain damage.

Exchange transfusion isn't without risk. Potential complications from the healing include blood clots, blood compressing instability, bleeding and changes in blood chemistry, according to the researchers. High bilirubin levels are also risky. They've been associated with a pressing form of cerebral palsy called kernicterus. In systematization to investigate this association, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research examined material from two groups of more than 100000 infants.