“In about two years’ time, Israel Defense Forces soldiers may carry with them to the battlefield packets with their own powdered blood,” says Ha’Aretz.
“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,” said Lieutenant colonel Amir Blumenfeld, head of the IDF medical corps’ trauma unit.
Every soldier going to battle will receive a packet with his own freeze-dried blood as part of his mandatory personal kit, much like the staple personal bandage.
When necessary, if the soldier is wounded in battle and needs blood, a medic or doctor could take out the dried blood bag, mix it with physiological water and inject the soldier with a transfusion of his own blood.
Hey doctors: is this even possible? Weigh in here…
Insta-Blood for Israeli Troops
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not a doc, But I’m tempted to say no. The ice crystals formed in the freezing process would destroy the membranes of the red blood cells, leaving you with a soup of proteins and not much else. Same sort of thing that gives cryogenic reanimtion backers fits.
I’m not a doctor either, but I would think that it’d be difficult…you might be able to make powdered blood plasma pretty easily, but you would destroy the vital red blood cells in the drying process, which would make the product much less effective, obviously.
I am a doctor and this is not something that I could see being completed very soon. Cryopreservation is the current way of storing and transporting blood products but the fragility of the RBC membrane makes drying and then rehydrating very complex. A more promising avenue for trauma fluids is Oxycyte a fluid emulsion than can carry 5 times more oxgygen than blood and is stable at room temperature. It is currently in Phase II trials in the U.S.
Having said that the IDF medical teams really push the envelop on field trauma as they were the first to introduce Factor VIIa for hemostatic control of bleeding in their troops’ field kits.
How about this as an idea.
The ice causes the cells to rupture, so you need to get as much water out as possible.
If you put salt in blood then osmosis will cause some water to leave the cells.
Then flash freeze the blood the resulting crystal should??? be smaller since there is less water. The membranes should be flexible enough to strech round these smaller crystals.
Any one think this is a good idea? (or have a way of removing the excess salt.
“Same sort of thing that gives cryogenic reanimtion backers fits”
that’s the same thing that came to my mind, Moose. if they can find a way to get something out of this, than it can be applied to cryogenics, and vice versa.
i wonder how exactly the medic in the field would rehydrate the blood…you can’t do it too fast and you have to have just the right mix. also, u’d need right liquid, not just water from any old canteen. tho, i could see a collapsable bladder being placed in the medics pack….
btw, i’m not a doctor either, but i gave blood today!
Robot,I’m a medic in the USAF and I’m confused when you say freeze drying plasma would destroy red cells? I used to work in a plasma center, and the plasma is seperated from your whole bood, and there arn’t really any red cells in plasma hence the clear yellowish collor. Besides Plasma in a trauma situation only does so much, since it doesn’t carry oxygen, in trauma situations you need red cells. The benefits of the using plasma in trauma has pretty much been replaced by medically enhanced fluids. Although Oxycyte as posted by Rhyuso looks very promising.