Know Your Hematocrit before Surgery
Sun, June 24, 2007 at 03:00AM If you’re over 65, you might want to know a bit more about your hematocrit. It’s the percentage, by volume, of the blood that consists of red blood cells. For example, a hematocrit of 25% means that there are 25 mL of red blood cells in 100 mL of blood. The normal hematocrit for adult men is 42-54%, and for adult women 39-46%.
A low hematocrit, signifying anemia, may be due to loss of blood (e.g. injury, surgery, intestinal bleeding), nutritional deficiency (iron, vitamin B12 or folate), or bone marrow replacement by cancer, or suppression by drugs (e.g. chemotherapy). A raised hematocrit occurs in people living at high altitudes, chronic smokers, and a rare bone marrow disease called polycythemia rubra vera, when too many red blood cells are produced; it can also occur in severe dehydration.
A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that, in older people, preoperative hematocrit levels outside the normal range are associated with higher mortality after surgery. Data from 310,300 mostly male patients over 65 who underwent major non-cardiac surgery showed a 30-day mortality for the entire collective of 3.9%. Patients with a preoperative hematocrit below 39.0% or above 54.0% had a 1.6% increase in their mortality risk for each percentage-point outside from this range.
This finding suggests surgeons and anesthetists should pay attention to the preoperative hematocrit in older persons, and postpone non-urgent surgery until those outside the normal range can be appropriately corrected.
Reader Comments (1)
Recently I discovered a rant on quite a respected figure in the tattoo community's Myspace. I say rant, it was more like pure venomous hatred.
It would seem that some find young people with visible ink, impatient and disrespectful, and they must all just think it's cool to have visible work.
I'm 23, My first tattoo was on my shoulder, then my wrists, then I got a full sleeve. Then I moved to my hands, then neck and I also have a large part of my leg tattooed.
It took me about two years to get the opportunity to get my hand tattooed by my idol, and then my neck by an artist I greatly admire, a lot of time, effort and thought was put into both of these.
Even though I'm somewhat older and do have a fair bit of coverage, I might still be classed as young and "under-tattooed" to have such visible work, and I can't help but think that's kinda crazy!
Sure I've seen some 18 year olds with kanji on their necks or poorly executed skulls on their hands, and you can almost tell they rushed into it, wanting everyone to see their new work as clearly as possible, and fine that to me is impatient and maybe even attention seeking.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that not everyone who has visible work is disrespectful to the art, some people invest a great deal of time, money and effort into getting that particular location inked with the highest standard work possible.
It's kinda funny to find prejudice within a community that tries so hard to divert it away from itself.
Thoughts?