Description:
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<jats:title>KEY IDEAS</jats:title>
<jats:list-item><jats:p>Patients undergoing cardiac surgery are considered at increased risk of anemia‐induced tissue hypoxia and transfusion‐associated adverse events.</jats:p></jats:list-item>
<jats:list-item><jats:p>Large recent randomized controlled trials addressing lowering the hemoglobin concentration for red cell transfusion (restrictive strategies) for these patients demonstrated slightly inconsistent results.</jats:p></jats:list-item>
<jats:list-item><jats:p>Combining all randomized trials of restrictive strategies for red cell transfusion in cardiac surgery demonstrated that restrictive transfusion strategies are not inferior to liberal strategies.</jats:p></jats:list-item>
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