Artificial blood is used in medical procedures and to treat certain conditions. There are two main categories: oxygen therapy and volume expanders. Perfluorocarbons and hemoglobin are used to transport oxygen. Hemoglobin-based artificial blood is most pursued by the US military.
Artificial blood is a basic filler for the human cardiovascular system used in certain medical procedures or to treat certain conditions. It is also known as a blood substitute or blood substitute, and while it does not act as a complete substitute for blood, it does help take up space and transport some important gases. There are two main categories of artificial blood: oxygen therapy, for blood that carries oxygen, and volume expanders for inert blood.
When severe trauma occurs, a serious danger is that blood volume is reduced to a point where the remaining red blood cells can no longer oxygenate body tissue, which can lead to tissue damage or death. Fake blood solves this problem by acting as a volume expander, compensating for the amount of blood lost. Since real blood has a remarkable capacity to carry oxygen, as long as the volume is maintained, even a dilute ratio of real blood to artificial blood can be adequate to keep a person alive. Even at half the normal level of real blood, a person’s oxygen levels can be about three-quarters of normal with artificial blood. At the outer limit, a person using volume expanders can drop to one-seventh of their normal red blood cell count and still remain stable.
The problem of creating a blood substitute that can carry oxygen efficiently has been a difficult one, and currently there are two main methods of getting artificial blood to do so. The first uses perfluorocarbons to transport oxygen and release it. Perfluorocarbons are mixed with a number of other things, including salts, nutrients, antibiotics and vitamins, to create a compound as close to real blood as possible. Perfluorocarbons may in fact have advantages over true red blood cells, in the form of their small size, which allows them to travel through capillaries closed to red blood cells, helping to oxygenate otherwise cut tissue. Perfluorocarbon mock-bloods include Fluosol-DA-20, PHER-O, PERFTEC, and Oxycyte.
The other method uses hemoglobin derived from animals, humans or created with recombinant DNA technologies. Hemoglobin, although a natural component of red blood cells, can cause kidney toxicity when used in pure form, so it must be treated in a number of ways, including encapsulation. There are several types of hemoglobin-based artificial blood in development, including Hemospan, Oxyglobin, Hemopure, and PolyHeme. Hemoglobin products are the type most pursued by the US military for use in the field, so a lot of investment and research has gone into this area right now.
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