What Kind of Surgeries do Bloodless Surgeons Perform?
 
What kind of surgeries can Bloodless Surgeons perform?
The quick and simple answer is: Any kind of surgery can be Bloodless Surgery.
 
As Dr. Aryeh Shander says, "Everything in health care can be done without blood (transfusions)." This is not an exaggeration, there is no surgery, including heart transplants in infants that cannot be performed without using transfused allogenic blood. Even in an emergency room trauma setting patients are being treated without blood products.
 
Every kind of surgery conceivable is being done by Bloodless Surgeons who come from all fields of surgery; they simply learn new ways of performing the same surgeries that they have performed in a conventional manner. Simply put: Any surgeon can become a Bloodless Surgeon if he wants to – and over 100,000 surgeons worldwide have made this choice.
 
Open heart surgery in 1962
In fact, the first bloodless open heart surgery was performed over forty years ago. Bloodless Surgery had been around before then, but the methods used were not the same as those used by Bloodless Surgeons today; they were simply surgeries performed by a conscientious and meticulous surgeon who performed surgery on a patient who wished to avoid a blood transfusion. They performed their surgeries in much the same way that they performed all their other surgeries but purposely avoided adminstering a blood transfusion.

Simpler surgeries
For example, ‘simple’ appendectomies and other less dramatic abdominal surgeries were performed by one Texas surgeon, Dr. Kenneth B. Riggle beginning in 1954. (Dr. Riggle is currently retired and living in the Houston, Texas area.) He referred his heart patients to Dr. Denton Cooley, who was a cardiac surgeon, to perform Bloodless Surgery on patients who desired to avoid a blood transfusion.

Since then many other surgeons have joined the swelling ranks of Bloodless Surgeons and today even liver transplants, hip replacements and other surgeries that traditionally require massive amounts of transfused blood are routinely performed without blood transfusion.

A broad range of surgeries
Open heart, spinal cranial, transplant and colon-rectal surgeries are all performed safely and effectively without blood transfusion.

Heart and lung transplantation, (even in infants) mitral valve repairs, endoscopic vein harvest, adult thoracic surgery, pediatric cardiac and thoracic surgery, hip replacement. All these surgeries are routine at top hospitals without the use of transfused blood.  -USC Keck School of Medicine

Add to the above brain tumor surgery, and herniated disk repair, oral/maxillofacial surgery, hand surgery, knee replacement, aneurysm surgery.  -The University Center for Bloodless Surgery and Medicine
 
Bloodless Surgery is routinely also performed in the following areas: gastroenterology, gynecology, oncology kidney transplant program, neurosurgery, thoracic, ophthalmology, orthopedics.   -Legacy Health

“More than 75,000 doctors practice bloodless surgery in the U.S.”  -Time Magazine, October 01,1997

Bloodless Hospitals
Along with the growing ranks of Bloodless Surgeons are Bloodless Hospitals. These hospitals specialize in modern Bloodless Surgery. Some have staffs of over 300 physicians alone. They are trained in a broad spectrum of surgeries that span every conceivable classification.
 
Twenty years ago there were less than sixty hospitals in the United States with established Bloodless Medicine and Surgery Programs. Today, in the USA, there are at least twelve hospitals that specialize in Bloodless Surgery for infants alone, and over 160 hospitals that have a dedicated full time Bloodless Surgery Program. Clicking through our list will help you see what hospitals specialize in which surgeries.

Conclusion
The conclusion is this: There are over 100,000 surgeons worldwide in every specialty and subspecialty performing Bloodless Surgery in over 230 hospitals on every continent.
 

Hear what the experts say
“We report the safe repair of complex open-heart surgery in children, without blood transfusion, even in small infants.”  -Perfusion, Vol. 9, No. 4, 257-263 (1994), Victor Tsang et al

“Open heart surgery was achieved without blood transfusion in the selected group of small children.”  -Makoto Ando, MD et al, Annals of Thoracic Surgery 2004;78:1717-1722

"Any patient who receives bloodless medicine is… the recipient of the highest quality surgery that is possible."  -Dr. Michael Rose

“Open heart surgery can be performed safely without blood transfusion for cyanotic congenital cardiac defects”  -Dr. T Sakamoto et al, Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Matsudo Municipal Hospital, Chiba, Japan. (National Institutes of Health)

“Patients actually do better when they undergo special care and special attention to blood conservation programs.”  -Dr. Norman Smyke, Grant Medical Center

“The latest beneficiary of the bloodless technique is 7-month-old Aiden Michael Rush, who is recovering in Los Angeles after a liver transplant."  -CBS News Feb. 23, 2001

“Over the last five years, surgeons have replaced Iris Carr's knees, repaired a hip, removed a gall bladder. They have opened her chest to slice away a tumor from her heart. She did not develop any of the infections that can result from receiving someone else's blood: "I'm glad I went through with it."  -Iris Carr, Multiple Bloodless Surgery Patient, age89, Josie Huang Kennebec Journal

“Bloodless surgery is separating surgeons from the old school of thought, -- on the necessity of an actual blood transfusion.  All types of surgery can and is being performed successfully without blood transfusions.  This includes open-heart operations, brain surgery, amputation of limbs and the total removal of cancerous organs.”  -Jane Doe Chronicles