16
votes
Accepted
People who can't receive O negative blood?
O negative blood doesn't have either the A or B antigen, and is also negative for the rhesus antigen. These are the most common antigens expressed on blood cells, and are responsible for most ...
- 436
15
votes
Accepted
Risks of blood donation with autoimmune diseases
The World Health Organization published a report entitled Blood Donor Selection: Guidelines on Assessing Donor Suitability for Blood Donation. Based on a review of scientific studies and other ...
- 1,848
13
votes
People who can't receive O negative blood?
The incident in that episode of television was mostly pure fantasy.
There are 35 blood type groups recognized by the International Society of Blood Transfusion, but for simplicity's sake, most people ...
- 9,384
10
votes
Accepted
Is lipaemia the same as hyperlipidemia?
These are not really synonymous. Despite some sites claiming them to be. Compare the usage on this site.
Lipaemia is describing lab artifacts, that is roughly too much fat in the blood sample that ...
- 6,867
9
votes
Accepted
Medical relevance of tetanus vaccination
Clostridium tetani is the causative organism in tetanus. It requires an anaerobic environment to grow so is found in soil and in the gut of animals. Person to person transmission is not possible. ...
- 13.2k
9
votes
Accepted
Why do surgeons wear blue aprons during surgeries?
Initially surgeons did wear white in the operating theater, but there were two large problems with this. Firstly, under the bright lights, the white reflects too much light making an inordinate amount ...
- 104
9
votes
Is lipaemia the same as hyperlipidemia?
Because the context refers to a serum sample, and it sounds like a low quality one, you should use lipemia (or, the british variant lipaemia), not hyperlipidemia.
See here for an example of the ...
- 3,188
8
votes
Accepted
Can eating chalk cause very low level haemoglobin level?
Eating chalk is a type of Pica. It is characterized by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive, such as paper, clay, drywall or paint, metal, chalk, soil, glass, or sand which is ...
- 735
8
votes
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How fast is blood replaced in the body?
Calculating from the numbers Wikipedia's articles on bone marrow and red blood cells, the bone marrow in an adult human produces between 200 billion and 500 billion red blood cells a day, taking ...
- 2,003
8
votes
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Is it possible to change person's blood group?
Yes, it is possible. In a bone marrow transplant, all of the patient's bone marrow is destroyed and replaced with donor marrow. Since red blood cells are created by bone marrow, the donor's blood type ...
- 9,694
8
votes
Accepted
Normal for menstruation blood to be brown/black at the start?
Menstrual blood is composed of a mixture of blood (blood cells), vaginal secretions, endometrial cells and inflammatory cells.
I have found no study investigating the change in colour of mentruation ...
- 3,194
7
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to get a cut from being elbowed in the head?
There are a few different types of injury to the skin. You can have a contusion (Bruise), abrasion (scrape), puncture, laceration or incision. The injury that you suffered is a laceration, as opposed ...
- 6,630
7
votes
Does staying at high altitudes increase your stamina?
I could not find a report where this has been formally studied but it is highly likely that persons coming to plains after staying at high altitude will feel more energetic, for a few days at least. ...
- 1,770
7
votes
Accepted
What do these blood tests mean in general and why do doctors ask for them before taking action?
CRP
C-reactive protein (CRP) is produced by the liver. The level of CRP rises when there is inflammation throughout the body. It is one of a group of proteins called "acute phase reactants" that go ...
- 6,742
7
votes
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How does a blood transfusion directly from one person to another through a line work?
Direct blood transfusion is both dangerous for the donor and inconvenient in a modern medical setting, so this does not really happen today outside of movies/TV.
Before blood banking and ...
- 13.3k
7
votes
People who can't receive O negative blood?
Bombay phenotype
hh or the Bombay blood group, is a rare blood type. This blood phenotype was first discovered in Bombay by Dr. Y. M. Bhende in 1952. It is mostly found in the Indian sub-continent (...
- 171
6
votes
how many 'lives' are saved from one donation of blood?
I'm answering my own question, yay! This is my attempt to answer my question despite my lack of familiarity with much of the medicine. I therefore stress that I am not guaranteeing this answer, it's ...
- 1,027
6
votes
Accepted
Are platelet donations needed more than whole blood?
I don't know if anyone can give a definite answer as to why these folks so badly wanted you to donate platelets over whole blood, but there are many possible reasons.
Platelets give you more bang for ...
- 1,848
6
votes
Are there variations in blood cholesterol by age?
Levels generally increase until the ages of 50-60, then fall.
In children, levels of LDL and HDL generally either rise or fall monotonically (i.e. continuously) over childhood; see Dai et al. (2009). ...
- 1,848
6
votes
dangers of keeping blood in a jar
First problem: Blood is an organic substance, and like all organic substances that aren't cooked, refrigerated or otherwise preserved, it will rot. You'll need to freeze or at least refrigerate it.
...
- 9,694
6
votes
Occasional medical tests and imageries
Screening tests such as "blood tests and imaging" have two costs and one benefit:
the cost (dollars and possible health problems) of the actual screening, which can in some cases be free
the cost (...
- 3,829
6
votes
Occasional medical tests and imageries
Great answer above. This is to add on to it:
Making a decision on whether to recommend screening tests for the entire population is different from deciding whether to screen an individual patient. ...
- 5,754
6
votes
Accepted
What happens when a hemophiliac woman gets her period?
"Luckily" haemophilia only occurs in men*; women may be carrier of the disease but their bleeding tendency is in general less severe.
However, haemophilia carriers and women with other bleeding ...
- 286
6
votes
How to calculate my "approximate" mortality rate while in ICU?
An individual person does not have a mortality rate: it means the fraction of people out of a group who die over a specific time period. It may seem like your particular chance of dying is that same ...
- 3,829
5
votes
how many 'lives' are saved from one donation of blood?
Here are some statistics:
Each year, an estimated 6.8 million people in the U.S. donate blood.
13.6 million whole blood and red blood cells are collected in the U.S. in a year.
Giving blood saves 4.5 ...
- 51
5
votes
Accepted
What are the online blood testing services that allow to pick and choose exactly what test you want?
Somehow today I had a bit more luck in addressing my own question. It seems that many of the online blood testing services do offer tests on a disaggregated basis. Their more popular products are ...
- 749
5
votes
Accepted
What causes aortic aneurysm
Aneurysm - a pathologic ballooning of a segment of a blood vessel
Source: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/arm/types - Public Domain
In order for an aneurysm to occur, conditions ...
- 711
5
votes
Can blood transfusion help in case of scleroderma?
I'm not aware of any work done in this area. A whole blood transfusion is not going replace circulating defective lymphocytes.
On the other hand Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation has some ...
- 13.2k
5
votes
Accepted
Blood donor restrictions (Mad Cow Disease) in Australia/France for people who lived in Britain, is it justified?
Blood donor restrictiction aims at preventing the transmission of the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (also known as Mad Cow Disease for a layperson), which is a prion disease that leads to ...
- 3,194
5
votes
How can blood pressure be high but my pulse low?
If that is the accurate pressure, you really need to go to the emergency room! 188 is high but not immediately dangerous, but 134 for a diastolic is outrageous. At very least go to an urgent care or ...
- 51
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