When Mike Towns went in for cardiac surgery recently, doctors hoped to save two things: his heart, and a few units of blood.

The 69-year-old retired owner of a general store in Duoro, a small town outside Peterborough, Ont., was having his aortic valve replaced at Torontos Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, where doctors have piloted an innovative bedside-testing regime to reduce the amount of blood and blood products pumped into patients at the end of heart surgery.

The new protocol has driven down the cardiac centres use of red blood cells by 20 per cent and blood products by 40 per cent, saving the hospital more than $1-million so far.

The pilot project, which is set to expand to a dozen other Canadian hospitals beginning in September, is part of a larger movement toward conserving blood in this country.

Experts say that movement will be critical to prevent blood shortages as the population ages. The older the baby boomers get, the more they are expected to require complex treatments that include transfusions and the less they are expected to roll up their sleeves and donate blood.

Its a looming demographic development that could begin to drain the countrys blood banks and drive up the cost of a system that already costs more than $465-million a year in provincial and territorial funding to operate.

There are calculations that suggest now that our blood has run out we only produce just enough to support cancer patients and surgical patients right now. Just enough, said Stuart McCluskey, medical director of the blood-conservation program at Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, which is located at Toronto General Hospital.

Theres a finite amount of donors. This is such an important initiative because the only way to make the balance sheet work is to reduce the utilization of blood when its not needed.

A 2012 study in the journal Transfusion projected that demand for blood could begin exceeding supply the same year the paper was published.

The researchers dug into the 2008 figures for blood donation and blood use in Ontario a province they considered a fair proxy for supply and demand rates in the rest of the country and then extrapolated out to the year 2036. If the trends hold, red blood cell demand is forecasted to outstrip supply as soon as 2012, the study concluded.

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How doctors are using a simple test in surgery to save blood and money

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