Hearts: Not Just for Valentine’s Day Anymore

by Nancy Dunbar, MD, BCP Transfusion Medicine Fellow, Tamalpa Runner and Nutella Fan

February is a month well known for cupid and chocolate. It seems that starting immediately after New Year’s Day the store aisles begin filling with heart shaped boxes of candy and conversation hearts. We buy Valentine’s for our children’s class parties; we drop hints that we’d appreciate flowers; we lament (or rejoice) that we will have a quiet day of solitude. Few holidays inspire such Hallmark, cookie-cutter images of big, bright red hearts as this one.

Well step aside Valentine’s Day because those February *hearts* are not to be cast away simply because February 14th has passed! Did you also know that February has also been designated American Heart Month by the American Heart Association? Here at Blood Centers of the Pacific this brings to mind patients undergoing heart surgery who may require blood transfusion.

Each year in the United States over one million heart surgeries are performed and these patients consume up to 16% of the national blood supply.  They range from very young newborns with congenital heart defects to very old patients with heart disease.  It is often these patients on the extremes of the age spectrum who require blood transfusion.  For the very young, red blood cells are needed to fill the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit which serves as the artificial heart and lungs during surgery.  For elderly patients, critical illness and pre-procedure anemia increase the likelihood for blood transfusion.  Older patients are also more likely to be on anti-platelet medications such as aspirin, Clopidogrel or blood thinners such as Warfarin which could necessitate platelet or plasma transfusion in the setting of emergency surgery.

Especially in urban centers such as San Francisco with robust cardiac surgery programs, like those at the hospitals we serve like UCSF, place a strain on the blood supply and require community support.

So this month, American Heart Month, have a heart and donate blood.

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