Abstract
Jehovahs’ witnesses (JW) are rejected for closed and open-heart surgery at most European heart centers as they impose serious moral and ethical problems to surgeons and anaesthetists. Members of JW refuse to accept transfusions of blood and blood products under any circumstances, even in view of the lethal risk of major hemorrhage [5, 9]. In addition, predonation of autologous blood which is one important principle of current techniques of blood saving methods [1, 3, 4], is also not accepted. Despite this, open and closed repair of various congenital and acquired heart defects has been reported by a few centers [2, 5, 6, 10]. We describe our experience with 62 patients who underwent cardiac operation at our institution over the past 10 years.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Rigler, B. et al. (1991). Cardiac Surgery in Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Experience of 62 Cases. In: Friedel, N., Hetzer, R., Royston, D. (eds) Blood Use in Cardiac Surgery. Steinkopff, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-06119-0_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-06119-0_32
Publisher Name: Steinkopff, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-06121-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-06119-0
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