— Lack of lower 30-day mortality seen in TOWAR trial data might push guideline changes
May 18, 2026
• 3 min read
For patients at risk of hemorrhagic shock after a traumatic injury, transfusing whole, type O blood rather than blood components on the way to the hospital yielded similar outcomes, the randomized TOWAR trial showed.
Thirty-day mortality came out at 25.9% in whole-blood recipients and 20.5% in those who got component transfusions (adjusted OR 1.24, 95% CI 0.87-1.76, P=0.24), reported Jason L. Sperry, MD, MPH, of the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), at the American Thoracic Society annual meeting in Orlando. The findings were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.
