Background
Pelvic, hip, and long bone fractures can result in significant bleeding at the time of injury, with further blood loss if they are treated with surgical fixation. People undergoing surgery are therefore at risk of requiring a blood transfusion and may be at risk of peri‐operative anaemia. Pharmacological interventions for blood conservation may reduce the risk of requiring an allogeneic blood transfusion and associated complications.
Objectives
To assess the effectiveness of different pharmacological interventions for reducing blood loss in definitive surgical fixation of the hip, pelvic, and long bones.
Search methods
We used a predefined search strategy to search CENTRAL, MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Transfusion Evidence Library, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) from inception to 7 April 2022, without restrictions on language, year, or publication status.
We handsearched reference lists of included trials to identify further relevant trials. We contacted authors of ongoing trials to acquire any unpublished data.
Selection criteria
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of people who underwent trauma (non‐elective) surgery for definitive fixation of hip, pelvic, and long bone (pelvis, tibia, femur, humerus, radius, ulna and clavicle) fractures only. There were no restrictions on gender, ethnicity, or age.
We excluded planned (elective) procedures (e.g. scheduled total hip arthroplasty), and studies published since 2010 that had not been prospectively registered.
Eligible interventions included: antifibrinolytics (tranexamic acid, aprotinin, epsilon‐aminocaproic acid), desmopressin, factor VIIa and XIII, fibrinogen, fibrin sealants, and non‐fibrin sealants.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently assessed trial eligibility and risk of bias, and extracted data. We assessed the certainty of the evidence using GRADE. We did not perform a network meta‐analysis due to lack of data.
Main results
We included 13 RCTs (929 participants), published between 2005 and 2021. Three trials did not report any of our predefined outcomes and so were not included in quantitative analyses (all were tranexamic acid versus placebo).
We identified three comparisons of interest: intravenous tranexamic acid versus placebo; topical tranexamic acid versus placebo; and recombinant factor VIIa versus placebo. We rated the certainty of evidence as very low to low across all outcomes.
Comparison 1. Intravenous tranexamic acid versus placebo
Intravenous tranexamic acid compared to placebo may reduce the risk of requiring an allogeneic blood transfusion up to 30 days (RR 0.48, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.69; 6 RCTs, 457 participants; low‐certainty evidence) and may result in little to no difference i...
