Opinion: Hospitals, like vampires, want your blood

Anyone who has been in the hospital, either as a patient or a healthcare provider, is keenly aware that hospitals perform a lot of tests. It has even been suggested that some of those tests may not be necessary. Now a new study published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery sheds light on just how excessive some of this testing can be. Researchers analyzed records from 1,894 patients who had cardiac surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and calculated the frequency and total volume of blood drawn from their subjects. They wrote that they "were astonished by the extent of bloodletting" they discovered.