Association between transfusion of stored blood and infective bacterial complications after resection for colorectal cancer.

Objective: To examine the association between blood transfusion and bacterial infective complications after resection for colorectal adenocarcinoma.Design: Retrospective cohort study.Setting: District hospital; Norway.Subjects: 446 consecutive patients having resection of colorectal adenocarcinoma.Main outcome measures: Postoperative bacterial infective morbidity in hospital.Results: 112 patients (25%) developed postoperative infections in hospital. Univariate analysis showed that the development of infection was significantly associated with increasing age (p ≥ 0.02), rectal compared with colonic cancer (p ≥ 0.002), preoperative radiotherapy (p ≥ 0.005), blood loss during operation (p ≥ 0.001), the extent of the primary tumour (T stage): T4 compared with T1-T3 (p ≥ 0.004), the presence of regional lymph node metastasis (N stage): N1-N3 compared with N0 (p ≥ 0.01), operating surgeon 1 (p ≥ 0.009), operating surgeon 2 (p ≥ 0.03), and blood transfusion (p < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis ...