Steroids During Heart Surgery May Reduce Need For Blood Products.

MedPage Today  (10/18, Fiore) reports, "Patients given high doses of a steroid during heart surgery were less likely to need blood products, researchers said" at the American Society of Anesthesiologists meeting. Researchers found, "in a post-hoc substudy of a randomized controlled trial," that "significantly more patients who were given dexamethasone 1 mg/kg during coronary artery bypass (CABG) surgery did not receive transfusions (61% versus 57.9%, P=0.03)."