Expert Panel Stresses Need for Prehospital Blood To Prevent Deaths

SAN FRANCISCO—On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, the military has learned that when personnel are injured and bleeding out, the ready availability of transfusable blood often makes the difference between life and death. While the application of this knowledge has saved the lives of countless service members, quick access to blood in the civilian context remains the exception, not the rule—a shortcoming that results in some 10,000 preventable