Riassunto dello studio

Ten studies containing a total of 3938 orthopaedic surgery patients were included in this meta-analysis comparing the effect of liberal blood transfusion strategies vs. restrictive blood transfusion strategies on the risk of infection. Pooled outcomes of interest included the risk of infection, pneumonia, and wound infection. A sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the stability of the results and the influence of individual studies on the pooled result. Results of the meta-analysis revealed no statistically significant differences between the two transfusion strategies in the pooled risk of infection (p=0.106), pneumonia (p=0.264) and wound infection (p=0.161). However, the sensitivity analysis excluding the Gregerson 2015 study indicated that results were unstable, and may have been due to differences in the infection definition across the included trials.