Inside a specialized intensive care unit for rabbits, Dr. Allan Doctor and his team simulate the trauma of severe blood loss. They drain a rabbit’s blood to.
Forward-looking: In a laboratory at the University of Maryland, a team of researchers is tackling one of emergency medicine’s most persistent challenges: how to deliver life-saving blood transfusions to patients who are miles from the nearest hospital. Their experimental solution isn’t stored in a refrigerator but in the form of a lightweight powder – raising hopes among scientists and military officials that trauma care could soon reach accident scenes and battlefields alike, where blood loss remains the leading cause of preventable death.
Inside a specialized intensive care unit for rabbits, Dr. Allan Doctor and his team simulate the trauma of severe blood loss. They drain a rabbit’s blood to mimic the condition of a person who has suffered a serious accident or battlefield injury. «This rabbit is still in shock. You can see he’s lying very still. It’s as if he were at the scene of an accident», Doctor tells NPR. «If we didn’t do anything, it would die.»
Today, however, the rabbit receives an experimental transfusion of artificial blood. In the lab, a technician carefully lifts the animal and administers three syringes of the substance.
The synthetic blood is produced by extracting hemoglobin – the molecule responsible for carrying oxygen in the body – from expired blood.
