In April of this year, D.C. Fire and EMS officially began its Whole Blood Program, which allows patients to receive blood before getting to the hospital — and trauma doctors say they are noticing the impact the early treatment has on a patient’s survival.
“The Whole Blood Program has bought them 20-30 minutes of life, which is key for that transport in the ambulance,” said Dr. Babak Sarani, chief of trauma surgery at George Washington University Hospital.
Sarani said before infield transfusions were available, people suffering from injuries during which they lost a lot of blood, they wouldn’t survive long after making it to the hospital.
“Patients would show up with essentially nothing left and they would just die,” he said.
Sarani recalled a case from several years ago when a young man was shot in the chest in Southeast D.C. He said paramedics did everything they possibly could to save him, including putting a needle in his chest and starting IV fluid, but the patient would continue to tell them: “I can’t breathe.”
That patient ultimately went into cardiac arrest and died by the time he made it to the hospital.
“The Whole Blood Program would have saved that guy’s life, and that’s the most clear example of what I can give you,” Sarani said. “What he ran out of was time. What the Whole Blood Program buys you is time.”
D.C. Fire and EMS Capt. Derek McMahan said he’s seen firsthand how many lives have been saved by the program.
“It has bought them more time in the field, us more time in the field, and potentially expanded the possibility of surgery. Previously, it wasn’t a possibility,” McMahan said.
Sarani said D.C. is fortunate to have a Fire and EMS service which is “aggressive with the program.” He said in some locations, patients won’t receive transfusions, especially young women due to the possible consequences during a pregnancy. In D.C., however, those transfusions will be done.
“The point is, you have to live to have a complication, and if you’re dead, that onto itself, is not an acceptable end point,” Sarani said. “And that’s how we designed the protocols with D.C. Fire.”
If you’d like to donate blood, the Health and Human Services agency has a way to find donation centers online.
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