‘CANNED BLOOD’ ADDS TRANSFUSION VALUES

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Soviet Scientists Draw on 660 Storage Stations, Using Fluid for Variety of Ills

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Soviet scientists were the first to store for three weeks blood in refrigerators for emergency transfusions. The blood is preserved with sodium citrate. No longer is it necessary hurriedly to summon a blood donor when life must be saved on the operating table or the sickbed. As a result of this Russian success “blood banks” have been established in this country.

Soviet Russia now has sixty large blood banks and 600 subsidiary ones. In the last five years more than 20,000 physicians have been trained in the Central Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion in blood-transfusion methods. Last year about 10,000 quarts of blood were transfused.

Because it has thus large quantities of blood on hand, Soviet medical science is able to resort to transfusion even when there is no emergency. Thus Professor Ziukov of Kiev transfuses blood in cases of scarlet fever, severe burns, acute rheumatics and typhoid with gratifying results. Though blood must be matched before it can be transfused in order to prevent clumping and death, Professor S. I. Spasikukotzky finds it useful to inject small quantities of non-identical blood in cases of blood poisoning, abscesses, joint diseases and slow-healing wounds.