Other Functions Than Carrying Oxygen
The functions of blood are many. Normally, for example, white blood cells defend against disease, platelets allow clotting, and blood proteins perform various functions. In addition, the blood composition includes additional molecules and electrolytes to function properly. Some of these components are substitutable with modern technology, and may, at least, be added to an oxygen-carrying blood substitute to create a more complete blood substitute.
Volume expanders may theoretically be called a blood substitutes as well, but in practice they are usually not within the scope of blood substitutes. Still, they are sometimes called "plasma substitutes".
Read more about this topic: Blood Substitutes
Famous quotes containing the words functions, carrying and/or oxygen:
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“If you think of learning as a path, you can picture yourself walking beside her rather than either pushing or dragging or carrying her along.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“All the oxygen of the world was in them.
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—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)