Recombinant human erythropoietin as adjuvant treatment for autologous blood donation

Homologous blood transfusions are associated with a considerable risk of transmission of a variety of diseases. An alternative is to bank autologous blood before an elective surgical intervention. Goodenough et al recently showed that with intravenous human recombinant erythropoietin the preoperative collection of autologous blood could be increased greatly. We investigated the potential of subcutaneous recombinant erythropoietin as adjuvant treatment for autologous blood transfusions in patients waiting for total hip replacement.