This article was originally posted in the Yale Medicine Newsroom.
In a first of its kind pilot study, Oliver Karam, MD, PhD, chief of pediatric critical care at Yale School of Medicine, and Marianne Nellis, MD, MS, associate professor in pediatric critical care at Weill Cornell Medicine, have been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study different platelet transfusion thresholds for children supported by ECMO machines (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). The ECmo hemoSTAtic Transfusions In Children (ECSTATIC) pilot trial will test two different platelet transfusion strategies, based on two different platelet count thresholds in critically ill infants and children.
Patients have received blood transfusions since as far back as 1820 but they became more widely used on the battlefield during World War I. Ever since, people have been giving and receiving blood, but there are relatively few studies to help doctors determine when and how blood products may be used most effectively.