Blood Transfusion: A Guide to the Practice of Transfusion Within Hospitals

THIS pocket-size paper-backed booklet is intenided primarily as a guide to blood transfusion for the temporarily registered doctor. Written in Dr. Discombe's clear forthright style, it could with advantage be read by any doctor, medical student or laboratory technician who is in any way concerned with blood transfusion. First published in 1955, this second edition includes the more important advances in knowledge since that time. The booklet is well produced and printed and the contents are so clearly set out that no index was found necessary. There is a page of useful references. The minimum of theory is discussed; and the techniques described, to which the major part of the appendix is devoted, are the sound approved methods of ABO and Rhesus grouping and cross-matching. The chapter on "Indications for Transfusion" is particularly good, and, inter alia, the author deplores the use of blood transfusion to raise the hwmoglobin level before a non-urgent operation when, in fact, the anemia brought about by chronic blood loss could well have beeni corrected by premedication with iron. Elsewhere he states: "There is no doubt that some doctors-especially surgeons-waste blood." WVhen discussing the avoidance of errors whichl lead to incompatible transfusions, he writes: "In a personal series of eighteen h.amolytic transfusion reactions, four were due solely to faulty grouping and cross-matching, three were due to faulty grouping caused by an importunate clinician who kept worrying nwy assistant for blood, ten were due to confusion between patients of similar names, to enthusiastic ignorance, or to rank negligence unrelated to the grouping procedure, and one could not have been prevented." In a future edition possibly some room could be found for describing the use of washed red cells, and perhaps exchange transfusions could be more fully dealt with. THIS new edition retains the style of the first, though "every word of the original text has been scrutinized" by John Howkins. Several new chapters have been added on exfoliative cytology, colposcopy, tuberculosis and carcinoma in situ, and these enhance the value of this book as a guide in the choice of treatment as well as in technique. As would be expected from the pen of Mr. Howkins, there is a valuable expositionl of the synchronous combined operation for carciiioma of the cervix, in which he is so expert. Altogether a textbook which will retain its high place with the many who appreciated the original volume, and which …