A blood substitute (also called artificial blood or blood surrogates) is a substance used to mimic and fulfill some functions of biological blood, usually in the oxygen-carrying sense. It aims to provide an alternative to blood transfusion, which is transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into another.
The main categories of such oxygen-carrying blood substitutes are hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOC) and perfluorocarbon-based oxygen carriers (PFBOC). Oxygen therapeutics are in clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe, and Hemopure is available in South Africa.
Read more about Blood Substitute: Oxygen-carrying Substitutes, History, Advantages Over Human Blood, Risks, Other Functions Than Carrying Oxygen
Famous quotes containing the words blood and/or substitute:
“Reagan was a flesh and blood version of any other mute national emblem, say the Statue of Liberty. Everyone knows what she represents, but no one would dream of asking her opinion.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
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