Transfusions: Risks, Benefits & Controversies | The Advanced EM Boot Camp

Transfusions: Risks, Benefits & Controversies by Gillian Schmitz, MD

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[Idahomie]

A good down to earth personable presenter.

[iliveonthemoonful]

This was amazing and definitely needed, thank you for sharing this!

[JusticeALL.]

I have been reading about blood transfusions and all the diseases that a person can potentially catch from them ( which totally boggles my mind since donated blood is supposed to be tested.) I just found out (by reviewing my medical records) that I had blood transfusions some years ago while in an ICU on a ventilator because I had hospital-acquired double pneumonia and hospital-acquired septic shock and was not expected to survive. My life has been destroyed as I am now permanently disabled and suffer daily. (My underlying condition was a UTI and a kidney stone that I passed on my own.) My question is: How safe is medicine in general? It doesn't seem very safe to me, given all the unknowns (everything I read goes like this, 'the tests are not 100 percent accurate', 'we do not know a lot about what causes it', 'the treatments are experimental', 'there are no treatments'; 'try ibuprofen', etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.) Then there are all the diseases one can potentially acquire while hospitalized (e.g., MRSA, C-diff, sepsis, pneumonia, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.)

Unless I am bleeding out, I will never again allow myself to be admitted to a hospital. The procedure performed almost killed me. Because I had never before been sick or hospitalized and I (stupidly) blindly trusted the urologist who said he 'needed to look around inside my kidney.' (I never saw him again after I went septic; he abandoned me.)
So, given my personal experiences and all that is happening in the world right now, I really want to know what good medicine and big pharma do (unless, of course, you have money and influence and are, therefore, the recipient of only the very best medical care that money CAN buy.)

NOTE: IF NOT FOR NURSES (who, in my experience, are the real heroes and lifesavers), many would die. I am certain I would have. It was the nurses and one ICU physician (with God's guiding hand) who saved my life. After I was able to be taken off the ventilator, I was transferred to the critical care respiratory unit. During my additional 12 days there, it was the nurses who managed my care (a hospitalist dr would pop in every few days for a minute or two.) When I was released I went to a urologist 60 miles from where I reside; he discovered a mass in my kidney which he successfully removed. (The 1st dr and hospital released me knowing there was a mass in my kidney; they just never bothered to tell me. Maybe they underestimated my intelligence. Or maybe they just did not give a damn, since single, older females (I was 55 at the time), in general, get worse quality health care. Watch John Oliver's segment titled, 'Bias in Medicine' on YT (when I saw this, it explained a lot about the way I was/am treated by doctors...at least that's how it is where I live in NYS.)

Lastly, when a person feels very ill and their PCP (often) cannot figure it out, the 'bounce around' from one specialist to another can occur. The costs, as well as the time expended only serve to add insult to the injury or ailment. I currently have 21 diagnoses!!! I am done with ALL of it (the office visits, the lab tests, the MRIs, the x-rays the radiation exposure, the medications that rarely help, etc. etc.) If anything, I feel worse after running around to specialists spending money I cannot afford to spend.