To Give or Not to Give

by: News Canada

(NC)-Donating one's own blood before an operation can provide peace of mind - but patients who donate their own blood also tend to require more blood in total than those who do not pre-donate, and the pre-donation can be both time- consuming and inconvenient.

Andreas Laupacis, of the Loeb Research Institute in Ottawa, has designed an audiobooklet to help patients decide whether they want to pre-donate their own blood, and is testing its effectiveness with 200 patients scheduled for elective heart surgery. He wants to find out whether those who receive the audiobooklet prior to discussing their options with their physicians are more knowledgeable about their options; have more realistic expectations about needing blood and suffering side effects; feel their decision was easier; and make different choices than those who did not receive the audiobooklet. If the audiobooklet proves useful, it can be used in other Canadian cardiac centres and modified for other types of surgery.

Dr. Laupacis' research is being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). CIHR is Canada's preeminent health research catalyst and is funded by the government of Canada. An exciting new concept, CIHR is modernizing and transforming the health research enterprise in Canada.

To learn more about CIHR please visit: www.cihr.ca, e-mail: info@ cihr.ca or write to: CIHR, 410 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa ON K1A 0W9.