Medical blunder
BRITISH government experts have revealed that thousands of people may have died because they were given albumin - a blood product instead of a simple saline drip. According to the experts, albumin treatment could have caused deaths to six out of every hundred patients treated. Albumin was first used to treat us victims of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. The alternative, a simple saline solution, which is at a thirtieth of the albumin cost is preferred by some doctors. The results, say the experts should be treated cautiously as the threat only exists when the patients are critically ill. Those people who had recovered were not affected at all.
In Britain, albumin is used to treat 100,000 patients a year. The study is a result of 30 trials involving 1,400 patients and re-examination of the pattern of evidence.