What Is Blood Anyway?

A few years ago I had a great opportunity to write an article series for EMS Magazine called Blood On Tap. It was all about the pioneering work being done by different pharmaceutical groups to create artificial substitutes for blood.

The technical name for the pharmaceutical products that mimic the properties of blood is “oxygen therapeutics.” Here’s the inside scoop, directly from the drug company big wigs, on why we don’t call them something cool like artificial blood.

The thing is, the drug company’s know full well that these fancy solutions are nowhere near advanced enough to mimic the many complex properties and functions of blood. That’s why they are aiming for the single goal of reproducing bloods ability to carry oxygen around the body. And, hence, the more lame name.

All told, blood is pretty magical stuff. Our understanding of blood in the prehospital universe only scratches the surface of all of bloods capabilities. However, there are several functions and properties of blood that you should know.

Here’s a quick crash course:

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Rapid Diagnosis: Vomiting Blood

The dispatcher reports that the patient is vomiting blood. Hemataemesis if you want to be technical about it. It could be a whole bunch of things right? … Well yes it could. Before you e-mail me to say that you can’t believe I missed Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever, here’s one web site that lists 113 possibilities.

But if you want to play the numbers, it’s going to be one of four things. And if you want to play “stump your partner” you can narrow it down quite a bit based on your patients age and disposition.

There are four things that tend to cause a person to vomit blood. Before you click on the little “read more” link, how many can you name?

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