Blood transfusions are potentially life-saving procedure that can help replace blood lost due to surgery or injury. Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood (Blood Facts 1). Blood has been used as a form of therapy for a variety of ailments dating back as far as the 17th century. There is no question that blood is an incredibly valuable resource. Over the years, there have been several significant advances made in not only the research of blood but also medicine. The history and research of blood transfusions has brought the discovery of blood types and the incompatibilities of said blood types. A blood transfusion is the transfer of blood or blood components from one person, the donor, into another person’s bloodstream, …show more content…
English physician William Harvey studied the hearts and blood of dogs and other animals. In 1628, he discovered and fully described the properties and circulation of blood. The discovery of circulation was an important prerequisite to blood transfusions from one animal to the same or different species. Shortly after the discovery, the first known blood transfusions took place. Many of the first blood transfusions, in animals and in humans, were unsuccessful and were fatal in humans. The first recorded successful blood transfusion took place in England in 1665. Physician Richard Lower bled a dog almost to death, then revived the dog by transfusing blood from another dog through a tied artery. Jean-Baptiste Denis, a physician to King Louis XIV, performed the transfusion of blood from an animal to a human in 1667. The blood of a sheep was transfused to a 15 year old boy, who survived the transfusion. In 1818, British obstetrician, James Blundell, successfully transfused human blood to a patient that had suffered from severe postpartum hemorrhaging. Of course, not every transfusion was a success. There were several deaths that resulted from failed transfusions. Physicians could not make sense of why the blood from one donor could keep one patient alive and be fatal to …show more content…
The blood types are determined by the presence or absence of certain antigens. Because of the antigens and the antibodies that the blood cells have, some are not compatible with the others. For example, people with type A blood will have the A antigen on the surface of their red cells. Type A blood contains an anti-B antibody, so if type B blood is transfused into a patient with type A blood, the blood will agglutinate. Individuals with type O blood do not produce ABO antigens, so they are universal donors but can only receive type O blood. The discovery of ABO blood types made blood transfusion procedures much safer for patients and greatly improved the success rate of blood
In 1615 at the age of 37 Harvey became the Lumleian Lecture specializing in Surgery. William Harvey discovered his finding of the Circulation of Blood by ignoring medical textbooks and dissecting animals. He gained all or most of his learnings from observations of cutting open veins and arteries of living animals. Many people of this modern time thought because there weren’t any anesthetics that Harvey was cruel for cutting open living animals. I think that if it wasn’t for William Harvey and all of his studies and dissections that we wouldn’t be able to learn teach and save as many people as we can today. We as people have learned a lot from the many studies and dissections throughout Harvey’s lifetime. We have learned that blood, arteries, and veins are all within the same origin, blood in the arteries sent to the tissues are not stay there, the body‘s circulation mechanism was designed for the movement of liquid and that blood carrying air is still blood, the heart moves all movements of blood not the liver, hearts contract the same time as the pulse is felt, ventricle’s squeeze blood into main arteries, the pulse is formed by blood being pushed into arteries making them bigger, there are no vessels in the heart’s septum, lastly there is no to in from of blood in the veins there is only
An exchange transfusion is a procedure that removes your baby 's blood in small amounts and replaces it with donor blood or the yellow-colored liquid part of blood (plasma).
Harmening, D. M. (2005). Modern Blood Banking & Transfusion Practices. Philidelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Company.
Charles Richard Drew was an African-American male born on June 3, 1904 in Washington D.C. He was very well-educated and intelligent, and he received his Doctor of Medical Science Degree in 1940 from Columbia University. During his residency at Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital, he became very interested in blood transfusions. Drew soon realized that the technology of blood transfusions was vastly limited; blood could only be stored for two days. He was determined to solve this dilemma because of the many lives it would save. Led by his motivation, Drew noticed that if the plasma was separated from the blood and the two were refrigerated separately, they could be combined up to a week later for a blood transfusion. He convinced Columbia University to start a blood bank and eventually established blood banks throughout Europe and the Pacific. Ironically, Drew died in 1950 after he had been severely injured in a car incident and wasn’t able to receive medical attention because of his race. According to an article entitled “Charles Drew,” “By the time he arrived at the more distant hospital for blacks he had lost so much blood that a transfusion was of no avail.” It was disputed whether or not Drew would have survived if given a blood transfusion immediately, and the story of his death angered many.
According to Karen C. Timberlake, “every individual’s blood can be typed as one of four blood groups” (556). The differences in blood is what makes every human body different from the next. Studies have shown that “people have either blood group A, B, AB, or O, with each type occurring at different frequencies in populations around the world” (Ananthaswamy 15). An individual with one type of blood cannot share blood or organs with an individual of a different blood type. Failure to distinguish different blood types can cause reject when a patient receives the wrong type from a donor. Certain methods are used in determining what type of blood a patient has. However, there are certain blood types that can accept any type of blood, and there are also blood types that can be used for any type of patient. There are many different characteristics used for categorizing blood, such as blood types, agglutination, carbohydrates, antigens and antibodies.
The Book of Blood by HP Newquist is about bloods uses now and as far back as ancient Egypt. HP Newquist explains how blood letting was very popular and very ineffective, but more often than not the person got better because losing blood made them tired and sleep helps concentrate the body’s attention on the illness. Early blood transfers also were not very successful because the scientists back then couldn’t tell the difference between O, A, B, AB blood types and therefore mixing different blood types. We now know that blood letting will not help the body get better, but people do donate their blood to help others who are in need of blood to survive, which now doctors can successfully transfer and identify blood types.
"What Is a Blood Transfusion?" - NHLBI, NIH. Department of Health and Human Services, 30 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 May 2014.
Although blood transfusions had been used before the First World War, many were not successful due to lack of knowledge in this type of treatments. World War I pushed the development of blood transfusions, allowing them to be safer. Before the war in the 17th century, blood transfusions often occurred with the use of animal blood, a practice that did not achieve desired results. These transfusions often times came from sheep, and although they were sometimes successful, it was discovered that any large amounts of transfusions would cause death. Coming to the conclusion that animal blood transfusions did not save lives, scientists looked to humans for human to human transfusions. Many of these attempted transfusions were met with failure but in 1818, Dr. James Blundell accomplished the first successful human blood transfusion; four ounces of blood were transferred to the patient from her husband. From that moment on, doctors began to learn even more about blood transfusions and how to do them properly. By 1901, the four human blood groups were discovered by Karl Landsteiner; with less differences in the bloods transfused together, coagulation and clumping amounts decreased. This benefited many lives in that toxic reactions to the wrong types of blood did not occu...
Dialysis is a process by which excess waste and water is removed from the blood to maintain a balanced proportion of contents/nutrients. Dialysis is done by using different dialysis machines which are usually very costly and sensitive. The duty to maintain a constant proportion of contents in the blood is usually done by kidneys but when they are not functioning properly the procedure of dialysis used. Therefore it is a very important and beneficial process for people whose kidneys are not functioning properly or who cannot undergo a kidney transplant due to various reasons for example blood type or reactive immune system. The process of dialysis might look very simple but there is a lot more ethical complexity related to it that will be elaborated. (White & Fitzpatrick)
Yearly, around six hundred to nine hundred people are diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia within the United States. Aplastic Anemia is a autoimmune hematological disorder that causes pancytopenia which is a reduction in major blood components, namely, erythrocytes, leukocytes and platelets. This disease has been labelled as a type of bone marrow failure, that is often due to not one but a variety of disorders that occur simultaneously. Aplastic Anemia can therefore be defined as a bone marrow disorder that is often rare, non contagious, and can often be life threatening.
The four main types of blood are A, B, AB, and O. If a person is given the wrong blood type, the antibodies destroy the cells. A and B are the two types of antigens. If on red blood cells you have the A antigen, you will have type A blood, if you have type B blood on the red blood cells, then you have type B blood, and if you have neither, your blood type is O. If you have type A blood, you have the opposite type of antib...
VI. Some individuals requiring blood are surgical patients; burn victims; accident victims; anemics'; hemophiliacs; seriously ill babies; and persons suffering from leukemia, cancer, kidney disease and liver disease.
Plasma was considered as the most important part of human blood, which carries out most of the function in relation to transport. Fluids is the major constituent of plasma, with an estimated total protein concentration of about 7.0-7.5 g/dl, as the solid component in plasma, that contain a complex mixture of different proteins which are mainly glycoprotein and lipoproteins. The concentration of plasma protein is largely occupied by Albumin, which is about 3.4-4.7 g/dl as the major protein; this protein will be discourse in further details, (Murray et al 2003). Plasma protein plays a role as biomarkers in diagnosing human diseases, due to their functions as dynamic interface for molecular transport in the body even though, their determination is very difficult because it contain almost 3700 different proteins as found in the literature, (Manley and Gailer, 2009). It was well known from early research, (Himmelhoch, et al, 1966) that plasma protein contain a minute amount of metals, and different technique were used to determine distribution, which will explained in more details. These metals are essential for many function in relation to good health of a living organism, 15 trace element found in plasma were considered of great importance in this aspect which includes but not limited to: Fe, Zn, Cu, Se, Co, I, K, Na, Mg, Mn, Ca, as reported by (Muniz, et al 2013). However, among these trace element Cu and Zn where considered as the most important of all the trace elements in coordinating health activities and were found to bound one metal per protein. The distribution of these metals was found to be high in Plasma Albumin with a concentration of 36.1-53.6 ...
Thalassemia is a blood disorder transferred through families. It occurs when the body makes less hemoglobin than needed or an unusual form of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carry oxygen. The disorder makes an excessive amount of destruction of red blood cells. This eventually leads to anemia.
There are several different types of anaemia with different symptoms and effects on the human body most of them have very similar impacts on health. Some people inherit the disorder whilst some grow into it. It can be diagnosed at the age of two or during the younger years in a humans life. The causes of this disorder begin with during pregnancy. Some of the common types of anaemia is: