Sejong Hospital was the first in Korea to carry out bloodless surgery,
which it has been doing since 1986

There are people who do not accept blood transfusions due to religious belief, or risk of AIDS or hepatitis B infection.
The idea of avoiding blood transfusions has been spreading gradually.
Sejong Hospital has already been performing bloodless surgery for a long time and has made a big difference in general surgery including heart surgery.

What is transfusion-free treatment?

It is a high-tech medical technique that does internal, surgical treatment and operations without the blood of a blood donor. It is performed by minimizing patient blood loss during medical treatment, especially before and during surgery, and maximizing blood production in the body. It has been practiced mainly in the treatment of members of Jehovah's Witness, but the medical technique has become popular due to the fact that blood supplies are insufficient and owing to increasing awareness of the risk of blood transfusion infection.

Purpose of Treatment

The main purpose of the transfusion-free surgical treatment method is to provide patients with good quality treatment without using blood or blood products. It is specifically designed for people who do not accept transfusions because of their religious beliefs, and the doctors, nurses and hospital workers involved in this treatment provide services that respect those beliefs and wishes.

History of transfusion-free treatment of Sejong Hospital

We have been operating transfusion-free surgery since 1986. At the hospital level and above, we have been the first in Korea to have a transfusion-free treatment committee and have officially conducted transfusion-free treatment.

In 1986, transfusion-free treatment began with the successful treatment of an 8-year-old girl who had congenital heart disease (a mitral valve repair was required). Later, an emergency cesarean section of a 48-year-old pregnant woman was performed and a 59-year-old female patient underwent a Whipple’s Operation for duodenal malignant lymphoma. This is the case of our hospital which is a big record in the Korean medical field. In addition, Sejong Hospital is famed with opening a new chapter in the transfusion therapy field in Korea, which involved the successful non-transfusion operation in 1999 of Korea’s then youngest patient (2 months, 4.9kg), specifically, a large vessel vascular complete correction.

  • In 1986, opened Korea's first transfusion-free center
  • Consisting of 9 specialists and 1 transfusion-free professional nurse
  • Successful heart surgery with transfusion-free operation technique of 8-year-old girl (1986)
  • Successful operation of the smallest non-transfusion open-heart surgery in Korea (1999)
  • A total of 964 transfusion-free operations have been performed to date (2017.12)

Cumulative number of transfusion-free surgeryTotal 964 cases (as of December 2017) / Unit: persons

Service information

In case of transfusion-free treatment, a professional coordinator of the transfusion-free center will help you in the process of admission. It is more convenient for emergency patients to be effectively treated by all physicians and nurses in the emergency room.