Immediately replacing fibrinogen in perioperative bleeding patients with acquired fibrinogen deficiency improves outcomes. The product that is primarily used for fibrinogen replacement in the US, cryoprecipitate (cryo), must be stored frozen and expires six hours after thawing, resulting in a delay in transfusion of approximately 50 minutes from the time it is ordered, as well as unnecessary transfusion of more readily available but not indicated blood components that are transfused while the patients waits for cryo . A modified version of the product, pathogen reduced (PR) cryo, is now FDA approved and can be thawed and stored for 5 days, allowing the product to be available immediately when needed. In this quality improvement study, the investigators will compare the effect that readily available, pre-thawed PR cryo has on transfusion practice in cardiovascular and liver transplant patients who receive PR cryo versus those who receive traditional cryo by randomizing cryo transfusions in the blood bank by month to all cryo or all PR cryo. All clinical decisions, including the need for cryo, and laboratory testing will occur per standard of care.
The goal of this quality improvement study is to compare pathogen-reduced cryoprecipitate with traditional cryoprecipitate in liver transplant and cardiovascular patients. The investigators hypothesize that by having immediate access to a readily available thawed blood product that replaces fibrinogen (the main substrate of a blood clot), early bleeding can be treated before it escalates into uncontrolled hemorrhage, and therefore additional blood products, like platelets, plasma and red blood cells can be avoided.~Participants will be given one of the two FDA-approved blood products.