A family member is getting one next week. I know im looking at it wrong, but if you have 8 pints of blood and they add in more where does the extra blood go? Or do they take some out first?
Tia
In: 4
There is room for a bit extra in your blood vessels.
Think about it like this; if you are not dehydrated but you sit an drink 2 pints of water, that water gets absorbed into your blood system. It will happen gradually over maybe an hour or two, but there is room for it.
Your blood then gets filtered through your kidneys, and if you have drunk lots, you will make more urine than usual and pee more, which balances out the amount of liquid in your blood to a normal type level.
Since your family member is getting g a transfusion next week (and not today) it means they are anaemia but not dehydrated. So they have enough fluid in their blood vessels, but not enough red cells. The blood they will be given is not whole blood (ie straight out of someone else and nothing done to it). Donated blood is processed and split into different useful products. They will get a transfusion of concentrated red cells that will be about 350-500 millilitres per unit. So if they only get one unit, that’s like drinking a bit less than a pint.
The blood transition will be don’t slowly, often over 3-4 hours so that there isn’t a sudden increase in the volume in their blood vessels. This allows the body/blood vessels to adapt to the extra volume in the same way it would if the extra volume was coming from the gut.
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