Earlier this spring, Karmina Martinez of Phoenix, Ariz., desperately called hospitals around the country, hoping that one would accept her 14-year-old daughter Jesmina, who needed a large, painful ovarian mass removed.

CARMINE GALASSO / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Dr. Aryeh Shander and Sherri Ozawa have helped advance bloodless medicine and surgery at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center.

None would admit her. The reason?

Jesmina and her family are Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious group whose members, some 1 million strong in the U.S., cannot accept blood transfusions, and there was a chance that Jesmina, at least according to the family's local hospital, might need a transfusion during surgery.

Karmina kept dialing. Finally she reached Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, specifically its 19-year-old Institute for Patient Blood Management and Bloodless Surgery, which agreed to treat her daughter.

"It meant so much you can't imagine," Karmina confided. "We prayed so much to find a way not to go against God's commandments. When we found the Institute, we collapsed crying." A few weeks after Jesmina underwent "bloodless" surgery in Englewood, the teen attended her junior high school graduation.

As data mount showing that blood transfusions are not only costly (on average, $1,200), have higher rates of complications (e.g., allergic reactions and other worrisome immune responses) and, according to Dr. Aryeh Shander, a clinical professor of anesthesiology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and executive medical director of Englewood's bloodless program, aren't necessary "40 to 60 percent of the time," a growing number of doctors today argue that bloodless techniques should be brought into mainstream medicine.

A 2012 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine study published in the journal Anesthesiology found that doctors vary dramatically in deciding when a blood transfusion should be ordered. According to Dr. Steven Frank, leader of the study, many doctors are ordering blood transfusions prematurely or unnecessarily. "Anytime there is such a large variation in a practice, there's probably room for improvement," he said. "There's more overuse of transfusions than underuse."

Indeed, at last October's annual American Medical Association conference, a group that convened to discuss improving health-care practices and procedures determined that blood transfusions are one of the top five overused medical treatments.

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Bloodless Medicine safer and more cost effective for all, experts say