During a eight month period[from December, 1988 to July, 1989], a series of 35 adults undergoing redo-valve replacement or coronary artery bypass grafting was selected to an autotransfusion group[n=10] or a control group[n=25]. The Cell Saver System[Haemonetics Corp., Graintree, Mass] was employed for autotransfusion. With this system, all blood shed in the operative field before and after cardiopulmonary bypass and remained in cardiotomy reservoir after cardiopulmonary bypass was aspirated by means of a locally heparinized collecting system. After the salvaged blood was centrifuged, the resulting red cell concentrate subsequently reinfused. The patients receiving autologous blood required significantly less banked homologous blood than their controls[3213k1020 ml and 506051931 ml, respectively: p=0.001] There were no clinical infections in the autotransfusion group, although 40% of the cultures of processed blood were positive. And there was no apparent intergroup difference of the clinical and the hematologic and hemostatic laboratory findings. We conclude that autotransfusion using cell saver is effective for saving the homologous blood transfusion in cardiac surgery.