No Additional Benefit With Use of a Fibrin Sealant to Decrease Peri-Operative Blood Loss During Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty

Blood loss remains a substantial problem associated TKA. This study evaluated the efficacy of a fibrin sealant on: (1) blood loss; (2) blood transfusions; and (3) length of stay. We evaluated the records of 113 consecutive patients with sealant and 70 without sealant. There was no significant difference in the hemoglobin levels (all 9.5–10 g/dL) on each of three postoperative days. There was also no significant difference in the intraoperative blood loss, postoperative blood loss or the total perioperative blood loss in both groups. The mean requirement in each patient was 2.5 ± 2.4 units in the fibrin sealant group compared to 2.0 ± 0.8 units in the non-fibrin sealant group. We have stopped using fibrin sealant based on this study.