What happens to the blood after you internally bleed?

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Does it just stay there forever? Where does it go in the first place? Does it dry up? If so, how?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

So all of your organs are packed together in your body. There’s space between them, and they’re covered in various layers of lubricated tissue that stops them irritating when they rub against each other. The tissue has different names depending on where it is but some examples are pleura (around the lungs) and peritoneum (around the abdominal organs).

When you bleed internally it’s usually talking about an organ leaking blood into one of these spaces – the gaps between organs. Some hollow organs like the stomach might bleed into their insides (like during an ulcer) but most solid organs will rupture and have the blood drain out of them (since there’s nowhere inside them to bleed into).

The most famous and dangerous spots for bleeding are around the brain, around the lungs, around the abdomen, around the pelvic organs, and in the gap between your thigh muscles. Why there? Because they’re the biggest spaces and you can drain your entire blood volume into some of them, so doctors always remember to check those 5 if they’re worried.

Blood in these spaces is treated like a bruise – it eventually clots and then the body’s healing systems gradually reabsorb it, first by breaking down the cells and then carrying it back into the bloodstream (immune cells can do that, they have special barrier-crossing capabilities that would take way too long to explain).

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