How do doctors know how much blood to give you?

Question

Say you've been bleeding badly, but the doctors at the hospital don't know how long for. How do they know how much blood to give you?

Answer 1

A visual determination can give the doctor a quick idea; eg, color of lips, skin, nails, responsiveness to stimuli, blood pressure, pulse. A blood test, CBC, complete blood count, will give accurate results. Blood is drawn and the test performed to check for blood volume levels. If the levels are below normal, the doctor uses these numbers to determine how much blood is needed. The blood will be infused to bring the numbers up to a safe level and maintained at this level. If bleeding continues the doctor will continue to give blood to maintain safe blood volume levels so the body can function normally. You can relate this to your car's oil level. The level of oil is checked, if it reads low, a certain amount is added to bring the level up to normal.

Answer 2

They draw some blood and check your hemoglobin levels and hematocrit (in laymen's terms, this is the percentage of red cells to plasma). They base the number of units of red cells to give you on how low these numbers are. Generally one unit of blood should bring your hematocrit up about 3%. A normal hematocrit is about 40% give or take 5%. I think most doctors tend to start transfusing red cells (or start to consider transfusing) at about 20-25%.
However, if you have an acute bleed (gunshot, stab wounds, severe internal bleeding from car accident), your hematocrit will be normal until your body can make up for the lost plasma. Plasma is replaced much faster than red cells. So the doctors probably start with one or two units of cells and a saline drip to get blood pressure up. Plasma will be replaced in a few hours and they will check your labs to determine if they need to give more red cells. Of course if they can't stop the bleeding they will probably just keep pumping red cells and saline into you at a rate that they determine is approximate to how fast you are bleeding.

Answer 3

Any wellbeing practitioner can order a sort and Crossmatch and supply orders to transfuse a affected person. Hematologists are docs that take care of varied blood subjects - leukemia, anemia, varied cancers. regrettably, in my adventure, many docs have not a clue what's in contact with doing a sort and crossmatch on a affected person -- especailly sufferers with antibodies or different blood banking subjects.... medical Technologists are the human beings answerable for doing the incredibly artwork to variety a affected person and locate like minded blood it incredibly is "risk-free" to transfuse right into a affected person.... it incredibly is a super interest, yet could be extremely annoying at cases.

Answer 4

They check your dipstick.

Seriously, that is why they monitor your heartbeat and blood pressure.

There are two considerations to this. One is blood volume, ie. plasma the watery part of your blood. The other is red blood cells that carry the oxygen in your bloodstream. If you do not have enough oxygen in your body you turn bluish and do not react right.

You can determine blood volume by taking blood pressure. The cell count has to be determined by checking how many red cells you have per unit of volume. There have been chemicals that can carry oxygen like reb blood cells that doctors can use in the absence of blood .... artificial blood ... but it is expensive and does not have clotting ability.

Answer 5

I suppose based on how much blood you seem to be losing when you first come into the ER..and the amount of blood is soaked up into your clothes...all that with how big of wound and where it is located (near a vital artery) they know about how much was lost and how much to give.

I'm sure when the paramedics come in they tell how long it took for them to respond etc....so ya i think thats how its done

Answer 6

the body holds up to about ten pints of blood. so if you have any sort of trauma then you can guess at about how much blood has been lost by what the paramedics have seen on scene or thought testimony of eye witnesses. also through blood pressure.

Answer 7

Blood is very expensive, so they just give you enough to fill
you back up to the "full mark."

Answer 8

They take a blood test to measure your haemoglobin and platelet counts.

Answer 9

I guessing that they monitor the blood pressure? they give more until the pressure is stable?