Blood VS Saline.

[beelzebossi@hotmail.com 28]

Saline should give health but really slowly.

[Spesago 13]

To be honest from an authenticity point of view I'd ditch the blood bag idea and just use saline for the purposes of the game.

I agree, there are tons of dangers not often publicised with standard transfusions, using blood that is carefully screened and cross matched, in a survival situation blood is so dangerous it is quite stupid to mess around trying to transfuse.

 

what would make far more sense is using exclusively saline, you could even combine it with sugar i believe to aid in osmotic pressure (saw it in shooter)

 

You should be able to make a saline bag by using an empty IV bag, boiled water, salt though i would say home made bags should have a risk of causing an infection.

[Frostbyte_ 44]

Saline is used to retain blood pressure (to keep blood flowing in other words) or to remedy dehydration. It doesn´t substitute blood and if your blood is too diluted you die from lack of oxygen (no oxygen carriers in saline...or any other iv fluid yet really). Further more saline has unfortunate habit of not staying in veins, as it will travel through the walls of your veins and ends up in other parts of the body. The good thing about saline is though that it´s cheap (it´s just salty water after all), easy to use, easy to preserve and does delay death.

 

What medics would use in severe cases of blood loss would be different plasma replacers, such as hemohes, because those actualy stay in the veins a lot better compared to saline, but are quite a bit more expensive.

 

And in the end if large amounts of blood is lost, without actual blood transfusion, patient will die or at the very least will be incapacitated for a very long time during which he will constantly need to be supplied with additional iv fluids, and that´s only if the bleeding has stopped (Which might seem trivial, but in 50% of battlefield casualties the reason of death is blood loss) Down sides to blood transfusion are that the blood types need to match, blood is rather hard to come by, and is really hard to preserve for any amounts of time in field conditions.

 

 

 

 

So, in my opinion, in game the saline could aswell replace large amount of blood, but also apply a blood degeneration effect after bit of time (much greater than there currently is, if there indeed is one). There needs to be other iv drips added, with less pronounced degeneration and longer time before the degeneration kicks in. And finaly the ultimate solution, and in some cases indeed the only way to stay alive, has to be blood transfusion.

 

<edit>

In essence saline would be temporary measure untill you start regenerating naturaly (might require multiple bags to be used during the regeneration period).

Other iv fluids would basicly be saline drips on steroids.

And blood would get you permanently towards healthy status.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Frostbyte_

[UbuntuFoo 40]

I thought saline was for unconscious only. Good to know!

I love having full blood bags hanging around, just be sure to harvest them in advance, and in a healthy state.

IMO saline and blood should have a longer time to administer. Saline should have a HoT effect rather than instant.

[WrecklessMEDIC 129]

If they wanted to be more realistic 1 saline bag shouldn't be enough to give a dying patient full health. Saline should be equal to a blood bag at 20% or so.

But and this is a big BUT, you can't refill a person completely with only pure saline. They need real blood if they're that far gone.

[DBladedPantz 0]

A moment if I could to offer conjecture on the topic.

 

If we all agree (and it seems we do) that Saline versus Blood clearly shows an imbalance....why don't we just suggest to balance it instead? What I mean to say is, lets swap say, the values of blood regenerated on the two sources. Instead of Saline giving back 100%, why don't we instead just swap the values and make Saline give 20%, and actual blood give 100%?

 

This way, its possible to stablize a patient from gun wounds on the fly with saline, but if you really want to give yourself and your people a chance, keep some blood on hand. That being said, I don't know if there is a limit to the longevity and effectiveness of blood kept in your inventory. If there is, great, it means the new values are proving their effectiveness in my offered implementation. If not, it still balances things out and I would suggest to implement a time limit to the blood and/or perhaps make its durability last longer by keeping it in certain portable containers, etc.

 

Thoughts?

Edited January 20, 2014 by DBladedPantz

[antonioajc 500]

A moment if I could to offer conjecture on the topic.

 

If we all agree (and it seems we do) that Saline versus Blood clearly shows an imbalance....why don't we just suggest to balance it instead? What I mean to say is, lets swap say, the values of blood regenerated on the two sources. Instead of Saline giving back 100%, why don't we instead just swap the values and make Saline give 20%, and actual blood give 100%?

 

This way, its possible to stablize a patient from gun wounds on the fly with saline, but if you really want to give yourself and your people a chance, keep some blood on hand. That being said, I don't know if there is a limit to the longevity and effectiveness of blood kept in your inventory. If there is, great, it means the new values are proving their effectiveness in my offered implementation. If not, it still balances things out and I would suggest to implement a time limit to the blood and/or perhaps make its durability last longer by keeping it in certain portable containers, etc.

 

Thoughts?

I have one, these will change in the next patch that's coming this week. No sense in replying to the thread that began earlier this month about an issue that's about to change.

[somethingbloody 118]

Has anyone tried donating blood with a healthy status? It might be a good idea if you're fed and hydrated to fill some blood-bags. Maybe eat and have a drink to get yourself back to healthy (if blood loss cancels it. I have lost healthy stat after blood loss to a zombie). Then you're healthy again and have some blood for your next emergency.

I think that blood should definitely be better than saline from a risk/reward game mechanic perspective. I'm not too sure about the real world medical applications, except when I had a heart infection and resulting ongoing cardiac arrests I was vomiting from the pain, and before I was diagnosed correctly I had to be given intravenous saline because my stomach wasn't retaining the water I needed for a good three days. The saline was an emergency fix for my dehydration, not blood volume or pressure. I could see that working in game if you are sick and dehydrated but some sort of sickness is causing you to empty your stomach before you can process the water into your hydration pool.

Ultimately, I am sure what we have now is not the system the devs are planning to implement. I'm not sure how realistic they want it to be, but the inconsistency right now and the amount of (useless) medical items already in the game suggests that big changes will come to this system.