Blood saving strategies during paediatric spinal surgery often include recombinant erythropoietin (rEPO) and antifibrinolytic therapy (AFT). The goal of this study was to investigate additional preventive factors involved in the risk of blood transfusion.

This prospective study was designed with the aim of identifying factors associated with the perioperative (defined as the intraoperative and the first postoperative day) probability of homologous red cell transfusion during scoliosis surgery in children operated during a one year period in our institution. The predictors analysed were: age, weight less than the 3rd percentile (W_<3P), indication for spinal surgery (idiopathic or neuromuscular), Cobb's angle, ASA status, preoperative haemoglobin, number of levels fused, duration of surgery, intraoperative fluid intakes, sacral fusion and thoracoplasty. Statistical analyses were performed using a multivariate logistic regression model.

One hundred and forty-seven patients were included in the analysis. Multivariate analysis found the following variables to be independent predictors for an increased risk of homologous blood transfusion: W_<3P, neuromuscular scoliosis and duration of surgery>255minutes. ROC analysis for the latter model found an area under the curve of 0.9 (95% confidence interval: 0.8–0.97). The accuracy of the model was 92.3% (97.4% for non-transfusion and 69.2% for transfusion). Multivariate sensitivity analysis excluding patients with no preoperative administration of EPO found similar results.

The current results indicate that optimising nutritional status might prevent allogenic blood transfusion and requires further investigation.