Def: Blood substitutes (also called artificial blood or blood surrogates) are used to fill

fluid volume and/or carry oxygen and other blood gases in the cardiovascular system.
Term is misnomer as blood perform many other functions also.WBC(fight
diseases,),platelets(promote clotting) etc.

The preferred and more accurate terms are volume expanders for inert products, and
oxygen therapeutics for oxygen-carrying products. Examples of these two "blood
substitute" categories:

Volume expanders: inert and merely increase blood volume. These may be crystalloid-
based (Ringer's lactate, normal saline, D5W dextrose 5% in water) or colloid-based
(Voluven, Haemaccel, Gelofusin).

Oxygen therapeutics: mimic human blood's oxygen transport ability. Examples:

Hemopure, Oxycyte, Oxygent, PolyHeme and Perftoran. Oxygen therapeutics are in turn
broken into two categories based on transport mechanism: perfluorocarbon based, and
hemoglobin based.

Detailed function……Even if a person loses half of his blood volume expanders dilute
the blood and help the blood to still transport 75% of Oxvgen to body organs………so
basically same level of oxygen with less blood…….artificial blood thus does nothing
more except maintaining the oxygen transportation capacity of blood

Future Research: Blood cells from Stem cells

Advantages
• Cost effective
• Battlefields
• Immediate oxygen carrying whereas the transfused blood takes 24 hours to reach
same level of oxygen carrying capacity
• Can be stored for longer
• No problem of spread of diseases like aids etc.

Controversies
• Used as performance enhancing substance
• No proper research done on effect on patients
• Brain surgeries more death cases reported
•