I understand the blood is going places its “not supposed to be” but its still on the inside so whats the deal?
In: 92
[removed]
In addition to the answers you already have about reabsorption, this can be a simple or complex physiological process.
Let’s say you hit your arm hard. You break some small vessels, they eventually clot and stop bleeding, the blood settles into the cellulite and between tissue layers, and the squashed muscle, creates a hematoma (bruise) an sits. Your body comes along, special cells clean up the debris, absorb the water, put it back into your blood stream or lymph system, and it’s fixed.
But, let’s say you hit your head really hard and have an arterial bleed aka internal bleeding inside your skull. The arteries carrying that blood are under blood pressure, so the blood is pumping out into the space between your skull and brain, squishing your brain just as if someone was physically leaning on it with their elbow. Good?
Or, say you rupture one of the major veins in the abdomen, the hepatic vein, perhaps. That vessel is big enough to slowly leak half your total blood volume or more, blowing your belly up like a tight water-balloon. Now you don’t have enough blood to carry oxygen everywhere else in the body and all your organs are being moved and compacted by the blood. Your heart now has more resistance to pump against because the aorta is squashed. Your lungs are crushed upward, so your breathing becomes shallow. Most of all, whatever caused the bleeding is still happening.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Your body re-absorbing blood would be like you putting toothpaste back into the tube while you’re still squeezing it.
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.
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.
Latest Answers