Eisler Lab
Principal Investigator
Our research focuses on patients undergoing high-blood-loss surgeries: identifying those most likely to need perioperative transfusion, weighing the risks and benefits of transfusion, and developing strategies to improve outcomes and blood bank resource management. Transfusion can be life-saving intraoperatively but carries secondary risks; conversely, avoiding transfusion can expose patients to harms from surgical bleeding and postoperative iron deficiency and anemia. Evidence-based solutions are especially needed in pediatric populations, where potential RBC alloimmunization can affect care into adulthood and where bleeding-related iron deficiency poses heightened risks.
Pediatric scoliosis surgery has emerged as a key model for this work: transfusion is common, particularly with preexisting iron deficiency or anemia, and predicts postoperative infection risk - plausibly linked to immunomodulatory and other effects of administering cold-stored blood. Iron deficiency and anemia are frequent before surgery and even more so during recovery. Building on these findings, most of our current studies use pediatric scoliosis surgery as a platform for developing patient blood management strategies, including ongoing clinical trials testing whether oral or intravenous iron can reduce transfusion needs, speed hematologic recovery, and limit the effects of postoperative iron deficiency and anemia.
The Eisler Lab was previously supported by the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research and the Society for the Advancement of Patient Blood Management, and is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS) and the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies, with additional support from the Lab for Transfusion Biology.
Clinical Research Coordinators, Lab for Transfusion Biology
Gael Colmenares
Annie Qiu
Sofia Mansuroglu
Sabrina Sharma
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