Shared by Steve Elmgren from a recent Georgia Prehospital Blood Coalition meeting discussion.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine (May 2026), this multicenter randomized trial (the TOWAR study) compared prehospital transfusion with low-titer group O whole blood against blood components (plasma, red cells, or both) in trauma patients at risk of hemorrhagic shock. Across roughly 1,020 enrolled patients, 30-day mortality did not differ significantly between the two approaches, and outcomes were similar regardless of how long the whole blood had been in storage (up to 21 days).