Interview with a Vampire

Yesterday I saw my friendly phlebotomist on the bloodmobile in order to donate some blood. I've got premium in my veins and the Blood Bank calls me every time they have a bloodmobile in my area.

So I must thank my supervisor for the title as he said I could take a break to go to the bloodmobile during my work day and I should log it as "interview with a vampire!"

I remember reading awhile ago that the Japanese were trying to come up with a synthetic blood which would not carry infrections and could not be rejected by any blood type. I guess they haven't yet developed one that good, or else it may be too expensive to produce in mass quantities, because I cannot find synthetic blood on the internet. I can find "substitute blood products" which are synthetic, but they can't do everything blood does.

One type of these products is called Perfluorocarbon emulsions (PFCE) and they are considered oxygen therapeutics, which apparently are superior to hemoglobin in delivering oxygen to the cells according to this PR release:

Due to the synthetic nature of PFCE's, the product has a shelf life of 2 years and minimizes the risk of infection or immunologic reaction resulting from a transfusion (i.e. mismatched blood type, mismatched Rh factor or diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B). In addition, PFCE's dissolve oxygen (unlike hemoglobin, which binds the molecule), which allow them to load/unload oxygen 2 times faster than hemoglobin, extract >90% of the transported oxygen and as evident in Oxygent™ (a current PFCE product), deliver the amount of oxygen of 1-2 units of red blood cells in one unit of PFCE product (100-110 ml). About 4-12 hours after infusion, the PFCE particles are removed from the circulation via normal respiration.

Blood is an amazing fluid. It serves many functions.

to be continued...