eli5: If someone dies in a hospital, why can’t we just give them organs and blood ASAP?
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Most people don’t die from blood loss, but from old age/diseases/degeneration. I assume you are talking about people who die from major trauma, like gunshots or car accidents. Firstly, we don’t have any spare organs sitting in coolers anywhere. There are hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists waiting and trying not to hope for a suitable donor organ (because that means hoping for somebody else to die). Transplants are done one at a time after carefully preparing the recipient, not on the fly in a rural ER after a six car pileup.
Usually when somebody dies of major trauma, it’s for a good reason, like an axe blow to the head. We could and do give them a bunch of blood but their brain is already dead or dying.
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