This week’s JAMA includes an interesting article by Dr. Bruce Campbell, a surgeon in Milwaukee. He writes about his apprehension in removing a tumor from a Jehovah’s Witness. The procedure itself was relatively ordinary, but it carried the real risk of bleeding — and the patient had, in accordance with his beliefs, forbidden Campbell from delivering a transfusion. (The article isn’t open access, but NYT’s Well blog helpfully clips many of the interesting sections.)

The patient ends up being fine, but Campbell was left with uncertainty about the situation:

For my part, I had spent two weeks becoming increasingly anxious that I might suddenly be called upon to protect this man from his own convictions. What emergency course of action might I have recommended if he had experienced a massive hemorrhage during the operation? Would I have tried to force his family to consider a lifesaving transfusion? I was still not certain.

If the patient had needed a transfusion, what should Campbell have done?

-Greg Dahlmann