PUEBLO — Flight for Life Colorado has improved the way it carries blood.
The aircraft carries three units of blood, one of which is whole blood.
“This allows us to take care of trauma folks in the field, any spontaneous bleeds,” said John Gilmore, lead medic for Flight for Life Colorado. “We can also support our small outying hospitals with these blood products. It’s getting to the point that several small hospitals don’t even have blood products in their facilities; we’re able to bring these to them.”
“Your average person has between five and six liters of blood in their body, depending on how big they are,” said Francie Anderson, Outreach Coordinator for Flight for Life Colorado. “So, if you’re out on a car accident, out on a scene somewhere in the country and if you’re bleeding, you can easily bleed out a couple liters of blood. And that’s the leading cause of death in trauma, is loss of blood.”
Flight for Life Colorado also has a new system of getting blood.
“It cost us five to 10 minutes departure time with the old system,” Gilmore said. “With this, it’s sitting beside the aircraft at safe temperatures ready to go.”
“Our boxes are actually proven to keep it for 72 hours,” Gilmore said. “These coolers were designed for combat medics over in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we keep it to 24 hours for safety’s sake. And it is monitored and controlled by all our Centura home base blood banks.”
Flight for Life says there’s a blood shortage across Colorado, making blood donations especially important for emergency responders.
“Unfortunately, we have things like mass casualties right now, and shootings,” Anderson said. “So, it’s important to have the blood banks in each city have enough blood. We may donate blood here in Pueblo, but if there’s something that happens in Albuquerque or Texas, El Paso, then Bonfils, they’ll end up sending the blood down there. So, it’s sort of a collective donation system.”