Dr Naoyuki Kamitani

Asia | Japan

EXTRACTS FROM OPINION, DATED FEBRUARY 1, 2024:

“About 50 years ago when I became a doctor, we used to have blood ready for any Caesarean sections and frequently use fibrinogen preparations. I felt a sense of danger for the fact that blood products were being used too easily. I believed that it would be better to treat patients without blood transfusions as much as possible. Later, as hepatitis and AIDS transmitted by blood transfusions became big issues, I became more inclined to avoid blood transfusion. Therefore, I started to seek better management for expectant and nursing mothers and tried to avoid blood transfusions as much as possible.”

“… For patients with transfusion restrictions, I would often discuss with the anesthesiologist about the amount of blood loss with which the surgery should be stopped. I also used advanced surgical techniques that greatly minimized blood loss and other principles of patient blood management (PBM) to manage anemia preoperatively. As a result of these approaches, there were no deaths during operations over 20 years of my practice. In the case of malignant tumors, there were two cases in which we were not able to achieve complete resection due to the restrictions on blood transfusion, but the patients did not die because of that.

With respect to newborns, we seldom face situations which require blood transfusion. In times past, it was regular practice to provide exchange transfusions to premature babies with neonatal jaundice. However, advances in medical care over the past decades have enabled us to treat jaundice without blood transfusions. In our experience over the past 20 years, we have not had any cases that required exchange transfusions.

In summary, my experience in providing treatment to Jehovah’s Witnesses leaves with a good impression on me. I have observed that Witness parents are loving and caring and that they earnestly seek the very best medical care for their children. Over the course of my 20 years of practice, I have never experienced any difficulty in providing necessary medical care to Witness mothers or their children.” (Original in Japanese.)