Duration of postoperative anemia
How long postoperative anemia persists cannot be answered generally, as this depends on many different factors. These include the type and severity of the procedure, the amount of blood loss and the general condition of the patient’s body and its ability to produce new blood cells. Often the values for the red blood pigment (hemoglobin) and the red blood cells (erythrocytes) return to normal within a few days.
If a blood transfusion becomes necessary due to high blood loss, the values increase directly with the transfusion. In some cases, however, postoperative anemia persists for a longer period of time. In such cases, further diagnostic measures (e.g. iron or vitamin levels) and, if necessary, therapy are required.
Prophylaxis
If severe anemia is already apparent before surgery, one should search for the cause to find the triggering underlying disease. Especially in older patients, anemia is often only a symptom of another disease. If one then treats the found underlying disease, the existing anemia improves and the risk of postoperative anemia decreases.
Since patients with heart and/or vascular diseases in particular have a much worse tolerance of anemia than healthy patients, these diseases should be treated in the best possible way before scheduled operations in order to keep complications caused by postoperative anemia to a minimum. Of course, it is best if the anemia does not occur at all postoperatively. Precise surgical work and rapid intraoperative hemostasis can prevent major blood loss, but cannot completely rule out the occurrence of postoperative anemia.
