White cell filters improve outcomes in open heart surgery
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Filtering white cells from blood makes open-heart surgery safer and saves money, cardiologists at Emory University in the US have found. A 400-patient study, carried out at the university in Atlanta, Georgia, showed that leucocyte filtration reduced the average hospital stay by 20% (from 6.8 to 5.4 days) and cut patient costs by around 15%.