Blood Supply - Donating Blood, Blood Components, Aids And The Blood Supply
type recipients patient physician
Blood supply refers to the blood resources in blood banks and hospitals that are critical to the health care community. The blood supply consists of donated blood units (in pints) that are used to replace blood lost during surgery or from trauma.
Blood transfusions were attempted as early as 1667 when Jean-Baptiste Denis, a French physician, transfused 12 fl oz (355 ml) of lamb's blood into a 15-year-old male patient. While Denis's subject improved immediately, later attempts to transfuse blood met with mixed results. Prior to the end of the nineteenth century, some patients who received blood from another person improved while others died quickly. In 1900, Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner discovered the four types of human blood, A, B, O, and AB, and the rules that govern their compatibility. Type O can be given to any recipient and is called the universal donor. Type A can be given to type A and AB recipients, and type B to type B and AB recipients. Transfusing blood of a type not compatible with the patient's blood can be fatal.
Additional Topics
Blood units are collected in the United States by the American Red Cross and by blood banks at local hospitals. Donations are always needed due to the constant demands of hospitals and their trauma units as well as to the brief shelf-life of stored blood. Some 12 million units are used every year in the U.S. Blood is collected by simply inserting a needle into a vein and allowing the blood to flow…
Not all of the collected blood is used as whole-blood transfusions. Some of the supply is broken down into its components. Blood plasma, the liquid part of blood that remains once the blood has coagulated (clotted), can be dried into a powder and used as a replacement for blood volume lost from wounds. Blood plasma need not be refrigerated so it is useful in situations such as battlefields and are…
When Acquired Immune Deficiency (AIDS) entered the U.S. population in the late 1970s and early 1980s, much was unknown about the disease and no test existed to detect the virus in blood. While initially confined to populations demonstrating high risk behavior, such as homosexuals and intravenous drug users, AIDS began to infect hemophiliacs and surgical patients who did not fit into such high risk…
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