What’s in Blood? - Reading Test Answers

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These transport oxygen molecules throughout the body, and also give blood its colour (from the hemoglobin protein within, which turns red when combined with oxygen).

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Similarly produced in the bone marrow, they are active only for three or four days, yet they are essential in defending the body against infections.

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If too low, excessive bleeding can occur, yet if too high, internal clotting may result, causing potentially catastrophic blockages in parts of the body and medical ailments we know as strokes, heart attacks, and embolisms.

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Blood’s complexity presents particular difficulties in the advent of emergency transfusions.

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Both of these systems are obviously impractical in an emergency situation, which is why meticulous testing, documentation, and labeling of blood are necessary.

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In a true emergency, a blood bank is needed, with an array of various types of blood on hand. Hence, blood donations must be a regular occurrence among a significant segment of the population.

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Although the logic was there, it goes without saying that very few patients responded positively to such treatment.

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They are produced within the marrow of bones, principally the larger ones, and live for about four months before they fall inactive, to be then reabsorbed by the spleen and liver, with waste products absorbed into the urine.

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When one of these enters the body, the white blood cells quickly determine its nature, then, after mustering sufficient numbers of a specific type (the period in which you are sick), they launch themselves into the fight, enveloping each individual invasive cell, and breaking it down (leading to recovery).

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Again, they are produced in the bone marrow, and have the interesting ability to change shape. There are several diseases related to the breakdown in the regulation of their numbers.

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Unexpected antigens can trigger antibodies to attack blood components, with potentially lethal results.

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The second best system is to undertake cross-matching, which involves simply mixing samples of the patients’ blood with the donors’, then checking microscopically for clumping - a key sign of incompatibility.

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In the developed world, unpaid volunteers provide most of the blood for the community, whereas in less developed nations, families or friends are mostly involved.

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Bleeding a patient was supposed to remove an undesirable excess of one of these.