Saved by Her Own Blood

Lila Mauldin, 26, Albuquerque housewife and mother of three, was always short of breath; she got tired in no time. Diagnosis of her trouble was easy enough, and last spring she went to Denver's National Jewish Hospital for an operation to correct mitral stenosis --a narrowing of the valve inside her heart, between its upper and lower left chambers. Without such an operation, Mrs. Mauldin was not likely to live long. But the N.J.H. surgeons found they could not operate because Patient Mauldin would need transfusions during surgery, and she had rare, unmatchable blood: type A (common), but with a subfactor known as RL^2 (uncommon) and two other mysterious subfactors which, together, would destroy any blood that she might receive by transfusion. Reluctantly, the N.J.H. surgeons sent Lila Mauldin home.

Then the surgeons remembered a recent report in Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics on the use of a patient's own blood for transfusions. They decided that Mrs. Mauldin would be the perfect subject for such autotransfusions. Back in Denver early this month, she gave three pints in five days, on a low-salt but otherwise normal diet. "That's pretty fast," says Dr. William Bormes, "but we wanted the blood as fresh as possible." Only four days after her third "donation," Mrs. Mauldin went on the operating table. Dr. Bormes opened her chest, slipped a tiny, fingertip knife into her heart, and opened the leaves of the balky valve. The only transfused blood Mrs. Mauldin got was her own three pints. Said she later: "When I came in here, I was thinking to myself, 'I won't get to raise my children.' Now I know I will. I feel fine."

With her rare blood, Patient Mauldin was a special case. But even for most patients, with common blood types, autotransfusion is the best possible source of blood. By far the safest thing for anybody to have flowing through his arteries and veins is his own blood. With it, there can be no mismatching, which carries a risk of serious or fatal illness. When an operation can be scheduled a few days to three weeks in advance, and the patient is not severely anemic or debilitated, he can usually serve as his own donor.

A team of surgeons at Chicago's Augustana Hospital has been using auto-transfusion for more than two years, with excellent results and no ill effects. The possibility was discussed as long ago as 1883. Autotransfusion remains a relative rarity, says a leading transfusion authority, because "too many doctors still don't know about it. Also, some are lazy--they won't take the time and trouble to explain the advantages to the patient, and get him into the hospital to have the blood drawn. But autotransfusion saves the patient's money, and may save his life."

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