Woodward's Foundation makes $40,000 donation to RCH
The Mr. and Mrs. Woodward's Foundation has donated $40,000 to the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation (RCHF) for a machine that's a big help in surgery.
The money will go toward the purchase of a new cell-saver, a technically advanced machine that retrieves blood in high blood-loss situations returning it back to the patient's body. The cell-saver washes the blood, removing all contaminants and gives the patient back his or her own blood with healthy red blood cells.
"At RCH, cell-savers are used 70 per cent of the time in cardiac surgery, but they are also used in any situation of catastrophic blood loss for trauma patients or for patients with large blood vessel issues such as aneurysms," said Dustin Spratt, chief of perfusion at RCH, and one of only 36 perfusionists in the province. "General best practice around blood product usage (blood transfusions) today is to limit its use and the cell-saver plays a primary role in doing this. Limiting use of blood product greatly reduces the amount of blood products used and thus the associated risks that comes with its use. Many lives are saved in trauma or in surgery because of technology such as cell-savers."
The donation brings the total the Woodward's Foundation has presented to RCHF to $1.15 million over 46 years.
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