Third-year resident, Kevin Olsen, MD, authored the case report titled “Blood Patch in a Jehovah’s Witness: Case Report of a Novel Arterial-to-Epidural Closed-Circuit Technique” with former Anesthesiology fellow Ashley Screws, MD, and Assistant Professor Stephen Vose, MD.
A&A Practice is a journal for clinicians worldwide that supports the educational missions of the International Anesthesia Research Society and Anesthesia & Analgesia. They publish short yet informative, peer-reviewed articles that describe the unique perioperative or chronic pain-related clinical care of one to three patients; an important teaching point or novel educational tool; or an innovative solution to a perioperative services, patient safety, or global health management issue.
Read the abstract below.
“Jehovah’s Witness patients have unique perioperative challenges involving blood products. We describe the use of a novel method to maintain a closed circuit between a Jehovah’s Witness patient’s arterial blood and the epidural space while performing a blood patch for postdural puncture headache.
Previously described methods have utilized venous catheters to maintain a closed circuit between the body and the epidural space. This is the first report we are aware of that utilizes a closed-circuit arterial blood supply to create an epidural blood patch in a Jehovah’s Witness patient.”