Kudos to Chuck Vacchiano for his award in collaboration with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the TriService Nursing Research Program on their application entitled “Pilot Validation of a Hemodilution Technique to Estimate Blood Volume in Vivo." This project has been funded for a two-year award period.

Abstract: The study will be the first to examine the utility of a simple, clinically applicable, and adaptable method to assess a patient’s TBV that does not rely on sophisticated, technology-dependent, direct or indirect measures of cardiac output.  Clinicians are faced with the formidable task of attempting to titrate IV fluids with the goal of preserving optimal tissue perfusion in the perioperative period without knowledge of the patient’s actual total blood volume (TBV). There is strong evidence that the use of various indicators of cardiac output as a marker of TBV and a guide for fluid therapy, so called Goal Directed Fluid Therapy (GDFT), leads to significantly better perioperative patient outcomes. However, current GDFT management protocols rely heavily on technology not readily available within or sufficiently hardened for use in the military field setting. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to assess the accuracy of determining patient TBV using measurement of red blood cell volume (hematocrit) with a point-of-care testing device before and after hemodilution with a standard IV solution. The specific aims of the research are to:

1. Determine subject total blood volume using the gold standard radiotracer dilution technique.

2. Compute estimated subject total blood volume using venous blood hematocrit values drawn before and after an intravenous fluid bolus (Hemodilution Technique).

3. Correlate inter-subject radiotracer dilution technique-derived total blood volume with hemodilution technique-derived total blood volume.