Date of Medical Observation
June 2007

Narration

A 29-yo female was transferred in our institution  from Our Lady of Fatima hospital.

Assisted by manual ambubagging she hardly catched her breath. Her eyes were entrapped in  her  swollen eyelids.

            There were no spontaneous movements. She only responded to a                     painful stimuli.

             A depressed glassgow coma scale was brought about by a huge                     subdural hematoma in the left  temporal area of her brain.

“We can not operate on her unless we have at least two units of blood available.”

  “ Our blood fridge is empty.  Our blood bank ran out of stored blood. Not even a single unit is available. You have to buy blood outside” I reiterated to the relatives.

                 We prepared the patient for an emergency craniotomy.

 After a couple of hours, the husband returned empty handed. He had been at Philippine Red Cross, manila chapter  then at PGH.

He tried even the small hospitals in Pasay city. Yet, he failed to get even a single unit of blood.

“You go to Philippine Children Medical Center in Quezon city, it is our blood bank clearing house” I instructed him.

                While we were preparing the patient for the operation, another patient                 came.

                A 35 y/o male brought by a concerned citizen bathe with his own                     blood after sustaining multiple stab wounds over his arms and                           abdomen.

    It was a penetrating abdominal injury which mandates immediate             operation. His vital status was non reassuring so we wheeled him in     the operating room at once.

    Then I returned back to man the ER. After half of an hour the phone         ringed, It was from the operating room.

“ Sir we need blood.”  The man from the other line said

“ I already talked to the pathology resident on duty, Our blood bank is empty.”  I replied.

The operation was conducted and concluded , no blood was transfused. Lucky enough the patient was able to endure the whole procedure.

He survived.

It was near sunrise when the husband of the first patient arrived. He was able to get two units of blood at PCMC.

We push thru  the operation which was successfully concluded. The patient is now on her way to full recovery.

INSIGHT

n  Physical, Ethical, Psycho-social

n  Discovery, Stimulus, Re-inforcement

                Can you imagine how pitiful it is for a patient to be brought in this institution in this kind of situation?

                May be if you are one of the patient relatives, you would pray the hardest way and ask to  change the rain into blood.

                Yes, it is our current situation out here. We have empty blood fridge.

                As far as I remember, we have been thru these for a couple of months now.

                We don’t have blood.

                It is a real system emergency.

                What is the problem?

                What are we going to do about it?

                What does the department of pathology do to resolve the problem?

                And we, the surgeons, what would be our alternatives to help our patients?

                I was able to talk to a pathology resident and these were his reply.

                “Previously, we had problem with reagents for screening donor’s blood.”

"Now that we already have the reagents. Here comes another problem. The machine broke, we  have to recalibrate it again. This causes the real delay.”

                 So we do really have a problem!

END