Preoperative anemia and perioperative blood transfusion in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Preoperative anemia is the most common paraneoplastic syndrome in HNSCC. Despite its devastating prognostic effect we suggest a restrictive transfusion policy whenever possible. Our data also show that anemia as an independent prognostic factor in head and neck surgical oncology is defined not only by low hemoglobin concentrations but low red blood cell counts as well.