Inova’s commitment to using blood wisely

Alan M. Speir, MD, is Director Emeritus of Cardiac Surgery for Inova and a Senior Associate Director of Inova Schar Heart and Vascular. He is board certified in thoracic and cardiac surgery.

Mary Looby, PharmD, BCCCP, is a critical care clinical pharmacy specialist who currently serves as the Director of Quality for Inova Schar Heart and Vascular. Before becoming quality director, she was a pharmacist for the cardiac surgery program, a position she held beginning in 2011.

At Inova, we treat transfusion as a precious resource. We approach blood transfusions like any medical procedure. If a patient doesn’t need it for their health and wellbeing, we don’t provide it. That means that blood donations at Inova are put to the best possible use – to save lives.

What is the current demand for blood in our area?

The current demand for blood and blood products is high. Our cardiac surgery program, which performs the most transfusions within the health system, continues to grow. In 2025, more than 2,000 cardiovascular operating room surgeries and procedures were performed at Inova.

Inova Blood Donor Services, which supplies blood and blood products, is the largest hospital-based blood donor center in the United States. It supplies blood and blood products across the region, not just for our health system.

The lifesaving role of blood in hospitals

Blood transfusion is a lifesaving treatment that we need in all areas of our hospital. There is no replacement for donated blood. Every day, lives are saved by blood donors. Without a healthy supply of blood, we simply could not perform the complex surgeries and procedures we do today.

Our hospital needs donated blood for people who are undergoing:

• Blood disorder treatment
• Burn treatment
• Cancer treatment
• Emergency surgery, such as from car accidents or natural disasters
• Labor and delivery
• Major surgery
• Organ transplant

Responsible use of blood at Inova

Blood is a precious resource – and at Inova, we believe in using every blood donation wisely. That’s why, for decades, Inova Schar Heart and Vascular’s experts have been carefully evaluating how and when to use transfusions to save lives, particularly in the setting of cardiac surgery.

Inova is a longtime leader in blood conservation efforts, outperforming national benchmarks with its preservation of blood during cardiac surgeries and in partnering with other hospitals in Virginia to implement region-wide conservation protocols. In 2025, for example, less than 20% of bypass surgery patients required blood post-operatively, compared to the national benchmark of nearly 29%.

Our cardiac surgeons recently teamed up with anesthesiologists, nurses and critical care staff to create updated, evidence-based guidelines for blood transfusions. Together, we looked at the data of more than 7.5 million cardiac surgery patients. The data showed that many cardiac surgery patients didn’t need a blood transfusion for a full and healthy recovery.

In response to these findings, Inova’s cardiac surgery program revamped its blood conservation guidelines, which launched in January. The guidelines include strategies designed to minimize the number of transfusions that are necessary through pre-operative anemia management and optimization.

For example, patients having elective (nonemergency) surgery who are anemic can be treated with IV iron before the procedure. This increases patients’ iron (hemoglobin) levels and decreases the chance that they will need transfusions during surgery.

Another aspect of the strategy is using medications, instead of certain blood products, to conserve blood. Although there is no substitute for blood, over the last 20 years, some drugs have been developed that can reduce the amount of blood products needed during cardiac surgery. To amplify blood conservation, Inova hospitals are rolling out testing in the operating room that enables surgical teams to know on the spot how well the patient’s blood is clotting, rather than waiting for lab test results.

Giving blood is easy

Even with the best blood conservation strategies, every hospital requires a regular supply of blood donations. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs a blood transfusion.

At Inova, we make donating blood fast, easy and convenient. Use our online blood donation scheduler to choose the date, time and location of your blood donation. You can also call our dedicated line at 1-866-BLOODSAVES to speak to someone about donating. Your generous donation could mean the world to someone whose life depends on it – like Alfie, whose story can be seen here.