Faith's ban on tranfusions spurs 'bloodless' surgeries

Surgeons worked Thursday to save a 74-year-old Oakland man's life,and abide by his religious conviction,as they performed emergency open-heart surgery without giving him a blood transfusion.As a Jehovah's Witness,LeRoy Grant believes the Bible forbids blood transfusions.He felt he could not compromise his beliefs."If I violate God's law on blood simply to gain a few more days,or years,of life,I would be dead spiritually,and my relationship with God would be damaged beyond repair,"Grant said recently at his home.Such a belief once meant almost certain death,but Grant was recuperating late Thursday after the four-hour procedure.Medical technology has advanced to the point that many doctors believe surgeries without blood transfusions should become the norm.The so-called "bloodless" surgeries use drugs to raise blood counts before an operation and limit blood loss during it.A "cell-saver"machine also allows physicians to collect pooling blood during surgery,wash it and infuse it back into the body intravenously."There's no conflict between the avoidance of blood and an excellent patient outcome:They go hand in hand,"said Dr. Lawrence Goodnough,a national expert on blood transfusions who is director of transfusion services at Stanford University Medical Center and a professor at the university's medical school.A once-archaic belief has developed an ally in cutting-edge medicine.Doctors say the faith's fundamentalism has encouraged the advances by showing how patients can survive with less blood than previously thought.More than 100 hospitals around the nation,as well as Duke and Johns Hopkins universities,have bloodless medical programs that train everyone from technicians to nurses to doctors.But in the Bay Area, Grant had found himself in a medical no-man's land since being told in April that he needed to have surgery or die....
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As in the days of Noah...