Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2026
1. Transfusion-associated cardiovascular overload (TACO) is most common in critically ill patients receiving a large amount or rapid infusion of blood products who have a history of cardiac or renal dysfunction.
2. TACO will present with signs of fluid overload, including tachypnea, hypoxia, jugular venous distention (JVD), and/or rales on exam.
3. Bedside ultrasound and chest x-ray can be useful in the diagnosis of TACO.
4. Treatment of TACO consists of oxygenation and ventilation as needed, diuretics, and pausing transfusion until the patient’s fluid status is optimized.
5. To reduce risk of TACO in high risk patients, blood given should be limited to what is necessary, rates should be reduced, and diuresis during/after should be considered.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.