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Freeze-Dried Blood May Save Soldiers' Lives
SpaceAdmiral writes "An Israeli company is working on a method to freeze-dry blood. This would enable soldiers to carry a packet of their own blood on the battlefield. If a soldier is injured and needs blood, medics could mix the dried blood with water and give the soldier a transfusion of his or her own blood. From the article: 'The idea is to take a soldier's blood, freeze it in laboratory conditions, take out the ice crystals leaving only the blood components. It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag.'"
Save them from starving? Mmmm, blood.
Polyheme is an artificial blood that is in the final stages of field testing in the USA. Taken together, these two technologies promise to significantly reduce deaths caused by trauma on the battlefields and highways.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I really really hope they label these bags clearly, or that morning cup of coffee may not taste quite right. Never fix your early morning coffee in the dark either.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
when I read the above title; 'freeze-dried bloody mary's may save soldiers lives.'
My heart was racing.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
" It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag."
Okay... but what about the flavor ?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Looking forward to the commercials with the suave vampires.
Where were you when the voynix came?
And needless to mention, it works great as backup rations when actual food is hard to come by! Stir in a little water, heat over a low flame and it's done!!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
" really really hope they label these bags clearly, or that morning cup of coffee may not taste quite right. Never fix your early morning coffee in the dark either...."
....especially in the lab, after an all-nighter analyzing Fat Bastard's stool sample.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Such insensitive clods! Don't they realize that there are robots out there in just as big a need of emergency oil transfusions!?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Sounds like the makings of a murder mystery. Hate a guy? Give him freeze-dried blood of a different type than what he's compatible with.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
[ok I'm punching out]
Vampire 1: Gah, my aching head. Got anything to kick off the evening? I'm knackered.
Vampire 2: Well....I...just a sec. Bah!
Vampire 1: What is it?
Vampire 2: Well, I've got this freeze dried stuff, but it tastes like shit.
Vampire 1: Yeah. Lets go out and see what we can find.
No sig.
Will it be overpriced too?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
I was just at a WW2 faire, and they were showing dried powdered plasma used for injured soldiers. This may be a step up but isn't a brand new concept.
This is an idea that has been around for a long time, but as far as I know no one has gotten it to work. The problem is probably that biological membranes have a hydrophilic surface and a hydrophobic core. In water they are happy that way - the hydrophobic part hidden from the water - but once the water is removed - then they are completely unstable (air/vacuum is effectively hydrophobic). Rehydrating probably gives some incredible mess of membranes. One can add molecules like sugars to try to compensate for the loss of water, but the fact that this was not done 20 years ago tells me that must not be enough - and that there is not some trivial answer. I did not see anything in the article that made me think that these guys had some break through concept.
From the blurb I was reminded of the movie Andromeda Stain. When I saw it I remember the scene where they cut open a dead man's wrist and all these red granules poured out.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
But seriously, is it really as simple as adding water? IANAD, but I would assume that plasma has some fundamental differences than water. Maybe it would just be as simple as a medic carrying blood-flakes for everyone, and only a few doses of the necessary plasma or whatever catalyst is needed.
Tang for Vampires....
Little vampire kids could run around with a bag of it licking their fingers and sticking them in it...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The first thing I thought on seeing the post title was "Man, that's going to hurt going in!"
So you're going to have a little baggy with a sticker.
If they're smart, they'll make sure that blood has to go into containers with the blood type in big letters, so that even if they get mixed up you can look at your dog tags to be sure you're not getting the wrong type of blood.
Then you also need clean water...
Today, when soldiers are wounded in action and need a blood transfusion in the battlefield or out in the field, military medics and doctors usually give them a transfusion of water and salt.
I just got done with CLS yesterday. The IV bag we use is a 500 ml bag; works great for a hangover. I guess you could mix the saline solution with this stuff but you still need a container to mix it in.
But it's hard enough to give someone an IV... now, by the time you were doing the transfusion you'd already have a saline lock in them. But imagine having to mix this stuff up and get it into a practical container while someone's going into shock.
...are going to love this. They'll be able to make their favorite food out in the field whenever they want.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
As a soldier, I would be ecstatic if this were to work as it should. I've stabilized many good friends who got plasma and blood just in a knick of time, because none was immediately available.
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They did this in the Andromeda Strain.
OK maybe not "they" but something did...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Why not start a 500cc bolus of NS running so you can increase their BP and keep your access, then mix up the freeze-dried blood and piggy-back it onto the NS?
Peace,
Captain Flying Toaster, EMT, Nurse Interim Permitee
It doesn't seem like it has to be all that complicated.
Soldier has his freeze dried blood in a deflated sealed IV bag. Medic or CLS carries water (or saline) in appropriately sized bag. Water bag is attached to blood bag and water is squeezed/drained in. Mix as necessary. Proceed as usual.
Sure there are a couple more steps, but the logistics are not insurmountable.
Speaking specifically about Israel's and neighbors current shenanigans, forget about the soldiers, let's save some civilians! Hmph.
Curse you plastic mold maker!
'nuff said.
There's a coffee chain in my area (Kelly's Coffee and Fudge) that has T-shirts that say, "Instant human. Just add coffee."
Somehow, that phrase suddenly seems all the more appropriate.
You will save more Israeli's if you end the oppression and give the Palestinians their rights. Oppression has not been working too well for you, has it?
This is what National Research Corporation, an MIT incubator, aimed to do in the 1940s ... It didn't work then becuase the cells wouldn't survive, but maybe they can aim for some good OJ. http://www.minutemaid.com/aboutus/history.shtml
Reminds me of the Bugs Bunny/Marvin Martian cartoon where Marvin uses an eyedropper to reconstitute martian monsters from pellets.
I wonder if they are planning on freeze drying soldiers so they can have an instant army.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Today we have gone behind the scenes at this fancy vampire restaurant and replaced their normal blood with freeze dried Soldier's Crystals. Will the guests notice the difference?
@Whee
I already saw this but I compared it to tea instead of coffee. I assumed you just used them like teabags because they had the strings. I think they're called tampax.
Hey, see my response to the other post.
Why not start a 500cc bolus of NS running so you can increase their BP and keep your access
Not sure about the jargon (and are other readers?), but I'm guessing this means giving them a saline lock (which allows you to swap different things into the catheter) and then starting them on an IV while you mix up the instant blood.
That's pretty much what I was thinking of in the latter half of my ramb^H^H^H^Hpost.
The biggest issue, I think is the durability of whatever you mix it in. Here's a thought: I can put a needle into an IV bag to pull some solution out. Why not make the instant blood premixed at a high concentration so I can simply put a needle into the IV bag, inject it in and shake it up? That way you're just carrying a plastic vial and you've already got the needles and IV bags.
The reason durability is such an issue is because getting someone out of a combat area is a long and arduous task.
Suppose someone gets hurt. Assume your people are able to get the patient to a reasonably safe place (without further injury) and they've ensured he can breathe and that blood loss is stemmed. In a serious case (where the patient needs a transfusion), the patient is already in shock from blood loss.
So you're setting up pretty much anywhere with cover, which means you don't have a nice flat surface to work on. You've only got whatever you brought with you so you don't have a lot of spares to work with.
Once you've got a clear route to the casualty evacuation point you're going to get the patient onto a litter. This could be a Skedco or a poncho wrapped around two sticks. A proper litter will have straps, otherwise you'd probably secure the person with your belts. So now you've got a few people, wearing gear, carrying the patient and his gear and holding the bag up, while the others are pulling security.
Maybe they'll just make it a sort of ziploc IV bag that you seal and shake up. That would make the most sense, I'd think, and eliminate the need for an additional container.
you don't want it to be a liquid; an IV bag could conceivably take a bullet, be patched with tape, and still save someone's life (although probably causing all kinds of complications from the fact that it's filthy.) A vial, once broken, will have utterly unrecoverable contents. The powdered form probably also has a shelf life that's longer by a huge margin.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not only that, but if you're going to use a soldier's own blood, you're going to have to draw a heck of a lot in order for it to be useful if he/she really needs an emergency transfusion. You put in a lot more blood in situations like that than you take out in a routine withdrawal.
TR
~~~~~
"Even pirates like chocolate chip cookies."
"Even pirates like chocolate chip cookies." www.youtube.com/musecast5
But does it come in DeCaf?
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2805cance r.html
In 1961 the U.S. Navy introduced the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It was designed to stay at sea for months at a time. But there was a problem. The blood supply could only be stored for about three weeks. To help find a long-lasting substitute for whole blood the Navy drafted young doctors, among them a surgeon named Judah Folkman.
JUDAH FOLKMAN: I was assigned to work on the problem of, "could you dry the hemoglobin part of blood, the red part, like you dry coffee, and then reconstitute it by adding salt water and have it all ready to go?"
NARRATOR: Dr. Folkman's job was to find out if reconstituted hemoglobin could keep tissue alive like real blood does. With his colleague Fred Becker, Judah Folkman built a crude imitation of a circulatory system and attached a living organ, a rabbit thyroid. When the pump was turned on, the hemoglobin began to circulate and sure enough, the thyroid gland thrived.