I understand the blood is going places its “not supposed to be” but its still on the inside so whats the deal?
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In very small quantities and broken down into sub cellular constituents it is reabsorbed. For instance a tooth extraction socket may bleed slightly for a considerable time without serious loss to the bleeder and all or most may be swallowed whereupon it will be handled by the stomach and gut like everything else that goes down. Internally it can and is reabsorbed in broken down forms. When you sustain a bruising injury, the pigments seen are products of haemoglobin and gradually fade as the molecules are reabsorbed. Even haemotomata (largish sub dermal bleeds) will disappear so long as they don’t become infected. Larger amounts of blood, say in the abdominal cavity cannot be reabsorbed quickly enough to save the patient from risk due to infection.
It can, slowly.
If the bleeding is slow enough, it can be reabsorbed without anybody noticing anything.
If the bleed is fast enough though, the body cannot reabsorb it fast enough.
As it so happens, if you can notice that there is internal bleeding, the bleeding was faster than the absorption rate.
This means that all the examples of “internal bleeding” we know about are those where the bleeding was too fast.
On the flip side, imagine how many times each of us have “internal bleeding” that was so small in volume or so slow in rate that it was all absorbed without anybody noticing.
For the same reason brake fluid won’t go back into your brake lines if the line breaks on a car. It’s pressurized, which means, once there’s an opening, it’s exit only. You’d have to have a second heart with an open intake vascular system through your entire body if you wanted it to re-absorb internally. It would have to know when to start absorbing as well. It would also take in other unwanted fluids/contaminants and most likely kill you or make you extremely sick.
Your veins/arteries would have to be porous or permeable enough to absorb it – which would most likely mean it would leak back out when your heart pumped. Also blood isn’t supposed to be everywhere just like your food can’t just go anywhere when you swallow it.
Also too much blood/liquid in, say, your chest cavity could keep your lungs from fully inflating.
Your body re-absorbing blood would be like you putting toothpaste back into the tube while you’re still squeezing it.
Maybe it’s best NOT to reabsorb spilt blood the same way your don’t want water off of your basement/garage floor back in your supply pipes. Blood in your arteries is clean but once you’ve sustained a localized injury severe enough to release blood you want the janitor in there mopping it out of the way to allow fresh blood to lavage the area. There is no advantage to recycle damaged and dirty blood. Just make some new stuff.
Back when the system was getting set up a healthy recovery was more likely with dump and replace.
The purpose for blood is to carry oxygen throughout your body, most importantly to your brain. It’s not enough for the blood to be “inside you body,” it has to be pumping through the circulation system that delivers the oxygen. Even if it could be reabsorbed back into the circulation system, by the time it does you’d be dead from the lack of oxygen delivery.
A related issue is the recycling of a patient’s blood lost during surgery. Use of a cell saver allows collection and cleaning of lost blood followed by reinfusion of the red blood cells. Thought to be better than banked red blood cells.
So it takes a while to reabsorb. Well it is sitting there it can get infected or other problems. If the bleed is bad enough your cells aren’t getting enough oxygen
Because of internal pressure of the pressures of the sinuses and diaphragm vs intravenous and arterial pressures and cardiac pressure and dilation of the mass amounts of tiny sphincters throughout the body. Depends on where you bleed for what.
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