ARTIFICIAL BLOOD (BLOOD SUBSTITUTES)

         Last two centuries have taught us many new terms which include artificial rain, artificial insemination, etc. But, have you ever heard of the word Artificial Blood?? Yes…. It does exist…

CONTENTS

• Blood
• Need for Blood donation
• Benefits of Blood donation
• Why Artificial blood is needed?
• Artificial blood
• Conclusion

BLOOD
                Blood is a liquid tissue which transports essential nutrients and gases like oxygen to all cells in the body also helps to maintain body temperature.

NEED FOR BLOOD DONATION
But there are several factors through which blood is lost like surgeries, accidents etc. So, to satisfy these patients, blood is collected from a healthy person and is donated to the needy people. There are several benefits of Blood donation.

Benefits of Blood donation

• Donating blood will reduce the storage of excess iron in our body which will ultimately reduce the risk of heart attacks.
• Donating Blood will give a sense of happiness and pride for saving a life 
• When a person is donating blood, he/she will have his/her blood tested for various diseases like AIDS, Hepatitis-B, syphilis etc. Also, the pulse, blood pressure, bodyweight of the person is measured. This will be very useful for the person to monitor his health.
• Also, during blood donation, the donor’s body will burn some calories and as a result, there will be reduction in the body weight upto 0.5 kilograms.

Why Artificial Blood is needed?

• A person can donate blood only when he crosses the age 17 (16 in some countries). Even he might be rejected for donating blood if he doesn’t satisfy the minimum required body weight.
• A person should be healthy while donating blood. 
• Only one pint (473 ml) of blood can be extracted from a donor while the receiver (patient) may need more pints of blood. So, a single donor cannot satisfy the blood requirement of a patient completely.
• Blood is required for several factors like surgeries, operations, to treat diseases like anaemia etc. The increased requirement resulted in the demand for more units of blood.
• Blood group like AB NEGATIVE is very rare and donors may not be always available.

Lack in blood donation gave rise to the concept of Artificial Blood

        And also, it is really astonishing to accept the fact that we have a shortage of blood units for transfusion. So, there should be an emergency aid for this and Artificial blood is the solution.            

                           

ARTIFICIAL BLOOD

 There are a few blood substitutes which are being tested and studied worldwide. The most common ones are Haemoglobin Based Oxygen Carriers (HBOC), PerfluoroCarbons (PFC) and Artificial Blood Powder.

This artificial blood has a specific advantage that they can be used for any person irrespective of their blood group. PFC has an ability to dissolve oxygen higher than haemoglobin present in our blood…..

Various clinical trials are made in animals and most of them proved to be successful. PFC products like Oxygent and Oxyfluor have underwent more than two phase trials which gave hope to researchers to reduce the need for donor blood during surgery.

CONCLUSION

Since these inventions are in the developing stages, it is important for us to donate blood as only 60% of the world population is eligible to donate blood and in that only 5% people are blood donors.

            DONATE BLOOD SAVE LIFE