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Previous Volume 341:124-127 July 8, 1999 Number 2 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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To the Editor: The article on transfusion medicine by Goodnough and associates (Feb. 11 and Feb. 18 issues)¹ raises two important issues: the physiologic significance of the peripheral hematocrit measurement and the hemostatic defect caused by acute hemodilution.

The hematocrit is a measure of the concentration of red cells in the blood; it is not a measure of the red-cell volume, plasma volume, or total blood volume and thus cannot be used alone to determine whether a patient has hypovolemia, normovolemia, or hypervolemia (Figure 1).^2,3,4 The hematocrit is correlated with the bleeding time, blood viscosity, and nonsurgical blood . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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