Hospital patients who refuse transfusion actually do better than other patients

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

3 pointsJan_jw3 comments

The report cites Clinical Professor James Isbister from the Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney. “Professor Isbister said Jehovah’s Witnesses were given better treatment by doctors trying to preserve their [the Witness patients’] blood. As a result they had better survival rates, and shorter hospital and intensive care stays than people who received blood transfusions during surgery,” reports the paper.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/surgeons-urged-to-avoi...

I don't see how they could limit the conclusion to just blood transfusions. JWs tend to live a very healthy lifestyle in general (diet, activity, community).

They briefly describe their statistics in the abstract:

We used propensity methods to match patient groups and parametric multiphase hazard methods to assess long-term survival.

Looking at the full text, they matched the Jehovah's Witnesses with patients that had similar health profiles prior to the procedure.

I am not qualified to say anything about whether what they did has any validity.

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