I'm in the process of moving- yuck- and came across a book I saved from somebody's trash a while back and never read. So now I'm reading it. It's a children's book called Healers In Uniform, published in 1971, and one of the chapters is about blood transfusions. I was interested to learn that dextrose was one of two things originally added to blood to get it to be stable enough to be able to be transfused into another person up to four weeks later.
It makes me wonder about how high blood sugar might affect the stability of blood for transfusion, but I don't know.
I have type O+ blood. I once went to donate blood, but they said I was too nervous and turned me away! Shortly after that I lost weight, and am not heavy enough to donate blood in the United States, where the weight minimum to donate blood is 50 kg = 110 lb.
I am working on a table of blood donation requirements in different countries.
3 comments:
Ah yeah...that is a good point. Now we run it in with Normal Saline (no Dextrose).
AND...the book was written in the year I was born - LOL.
Not what they ran it in with- but what they preserved it with in the first place (like, what is in the bag with the blood).
It is still the case that either glucose or dextrose is added to all whole blood donations in order to keep them stable before being infused into another person:
http://mahasbtc.aarogya.com/index.php/blood-bank/preservation-and-storage
Very interesting, Jonah! Your tidbits never cease to amaze me :)
Good luck with the move!!!! Or...good luck getting settled, I should say since it's after the fact :)
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