Blood can be considered the life line for all tissues in the body and when the circulation gets disrupted, the tissues would be deprived of several essential elements such as oxygen, nutrients, hormones as well as other substances. This can ultimately lead to gradual cell death or even rapid cell death according to the level of deprivation and based on other associated factors. Similar to the effects manifested through disruption to its flow, loss of blood would also give rise to many complications of which some may even be life threatening. What was depicted in this paragraph is the important role played by blood in relation to our health and medical science makes use of this element in many different ways to save lives, to make diagnosis and for medical research. Thus, let us discuss some of the medical uses of blood in detail.
Replacement of blood loss and volume depletion:
Perhaps this is one of the commonest uses of blood in a therapeutic setting and would be rather effective in increasing the intravascular volume and the hemoglobin levels. It is rather useful in acute blood loss or else in instances where hemoglobin levels have fallen due to chronic illnesses, dietary deficiencies as well as in chronic blood losses as in the case of gastric ulcers, diverticular disease and in cancers of the intestines.
Separation of blood products and factors:
Blood contains many components such as platelets, plasma, packed cells as well as clotting factors. Using specialized techniques, these factors can be separated and it is of obvious use in cases of clotting disorders, factor deficiencies as well as in platelet depletions. Furthermore, plasma would also be useful in instances where protein loss or depletion has taken place as in the cases such as liver failure.
Diagnosis:
Blood is also useful in making certain diagnosis as different investigations have been developed aiming certain elements detected in relation to medical conditions. The investigations performed using blood can include biochemical studies, cell counts and morphology, genetic assessments, blood gas analysis as well as detection of certain other elements.
Drug administration:
One of the most effective modes of administering drugs would be direct injection into a vein and this would make the efficacy of a certain medicine to be high and therefore will give the ability to eliminate disease conditions rather early and effectively.
Pre-op preparation:
Similar to above mentioned uses, administering blood before, while performing or else after a surgery would be rather useful in preventing possible complications which may arise due to inadequate intravascular volume or else due to blood loss during surgery.
