The Human Blood Transfusion

The Mayo Clinic defines a blood transfusion as “a routine medical procedure in which donated blood is provided to you through a narrow tube placed within a vein in your arm”. The first human blood transfusion on record was conducted by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys, a French physician during the late 1600’s. Although Denys’ transfusions weren’t sound proof and often written off as unorthodox, he unknowingly ushered in a new era of medicine and laid the foundation for modern advances in Hematology. I choose this topic because I volunteer to donate blood four times a year alongside thousands of other people. On average these donations help save 4.5 million Americans that would die in a years’ time without a blood transfusion. These generous people

Blood donations were being made on a regular basis come the 1900’s, yet the donator had to be present to give the blood directly to the recipient due to the accelerated coagulation of blood once it mixed with the open air. To rectify this problem hematologists started adding sodium citrate to the blood of the donator which would in turn delay the coagulation process by a few days. This allowed for the first storing of blood and introduced the term “Blood Bank”. Dr. Bernard Fantus, the director of the Cook County Hospital in northern Chicago, IL spearheaded this discovery. He thought by lowering the temperature of blood that it would lower its metabolism and thereby prolong its vitality. Unknowingly, Dr. Fantus created the first Blood Bank within the United States which would in turn change the course of medicine and human mortality forever. With this new leap forward in modern medicine, blood donations in the United Sates were at an all time high during the 20th Century due to WWI and WWII. Blood transfusions saved the life of countless individuals participating in the war efforts. The Red cross reported that they alone were “distributing 40 percent of the Countries blood supply”. Alongside aiding with the war efforts, blood transfusions also carried an array of health benefits as

Blood transfusions allow for infected blood cells to be cycled out and replaced by fresh new blood cells in hope that hemoglobin levels will be restored within the body. When treating a person with liver disease it’s almost routine for them to experience several blood transfusions a month in order to help restore properly working blood cells back into their bodies. Blood transfusions are also a more structurally sound medical procedure when compared to several medications or radiation therapy alternatives, which can in turn cause a number of other problems. Another example of a disease that can be supported by the cycling of blood is Anemia. There several different types of anemia including aplastic, fanconi, hemolytic, and sickle cell anemia. The Mayo Clinic describes Anemia as “condition in which you don't have enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to the body's tissues”. Hematologists have been prescribing their anemia patients with several blood transfusions a month in hopes of training their bodies to make proper working blood cells once again. A study posted in the Journal of Palliative Medicine was conducted on 64 volunteer patients with several different forms of anemia to see if blood transfusions would benefit their hemoglobin values over a 15-day period. It turns out that 95 percent of the patients had some