Researchers are currently in the process of developing a synthetic blood substitute. It is being envisioned as a means to get life saving blood to trauma victims or to injured soldiers on the battlefield more efficiently and effectively.
The powder looks a bit like the powdered spice paprika. When dried, the synthetic red blood cell substitute is about 2 percent of the size of an actual red blood cell. It can be reconstituted into a usable blood substitute by adding sterile water.
Blood transfusions are a relatively modern medical invention that has saved countless lives. But blood is finicky stuff. It needs to be kept cold, thus is stored in refrigerator units or kept on ice if those are not available. After being drawn from another person,…show more content… Additionally, real blood taken from human donors can be tainted with blood borne pathogens and can cause problems due to blood types not matching.
Even getting donations of fresh blood in war torn areas can be problematic. War does terrible things to infrastructure and it can be challenging to keep things adequately sterile. So even if the need for blood is immediate and there is no need for refrigeration because it will be used promptly, the sensitive nature of human blood introduces challenges that can cost lives.
Accident victims or soldiers in battle can die from shock and/or blood loss before they reach life-saving medical facilities. Although most people do not realize it, shock is really just a serious circulatory problem -- one that can be deadly. Blood transfusions can help prevent death in such cases.
This can be true in cases where they aren't really all that traumatized, but simply have lost a lot of blood. In other words, there are cases where prospects for complete recovery are high if they can get a blood transfusion in a timely fashion, yet, they sometimes die before a transfusion can take place. This is true primarily because blood is so hard to supply under field
