One of my family members is having issues with their blood pressure being to high right now. I just started thinking, and in my mind “high” blood pressure means too much blood in the veins like pressure in a tube or something.
If someone with high blood pressure were to get an injury would they bleed a lot more than someone with normal or even low blood pressure?
All I can picture is a water balloon exploding and all the blood rushing out. 😂😂
In: 10
If they are on certain medications (blood thinners), they will bleed more and increase the time for wounds to heal.
The answer is Yes. A fluid will always flow from an area of high pressure to that of lower pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the velocity of the flow.
The effect is most noticeable in arteries. Blood pressure is much higher in the arteries than the capillaries or veins. Inside the body, it’s flowing along the same gradient, from an area of high pressure, to low. If an artery is cut, it will spirt. The higher the blood pressure, the more forcefully it will spurt, all else being equal. So the other factors would be heart rate and coagulants. A capillary cut will seep more rapidly and vein will leak more rapidly. But it’s not as dramatic as an arterial cut.
If you were talking about water in a pipe then, yes, higher pressure means more water would leak out if the pipe were punctured.
But there are more factors than blood pressure in determining how much a person bleeds when cut or punctured.
Blood clots as a way to stop a person from bleeding. A person with high blood pressure could bleed more but it would depend a lot on how well their blood clots.
People are mentioning blood thinners because blood thinners can keep your blood from clotting as well, so you will bleed more when on them, but this is predominately due to the blood thinners and not the high blood pressure.
Going back to our water in a pipe analogy – if you put some thickening agent like corn starch in the water, it would leak less quickly when the pipe was punctured because the corn starch acts as a clotting agent and will block the hole better than plain water, just like blood’s ability to stop a puncture or cut from bleeding by clotting.
I don’t know about skin wounds but it is true for inner bleedings.
Controlling blood pressure is the N°1 treatment for brain hemorrhage for example.
So I’d assume this stays true for flesh wounds.
A superficial cut causes leakage of venous blood. Not from pressurized arteries. So generally no, HBP won’t cause more perfuse bleeding from cuts.
Latest Answers