Blood loss and drugging - treatment and hospital time?
Hello, everyone. I've got a question about blood loss today. Or, not really about blood loss, but about replacing blood that's been lost. Plus a few other things.
Set up is this: male in his late 30's, 6'2", estimated weight between 175-190 pounds. He's had some pretty serious respiratory issues in canon (pneumonic plague, to be precise), but aside from his friends mentioning the potential for him to relapse or suffer long-term affects, he doesn't seem to have had any. He's lost between 3 - 3 1/2 pints of blood over a two hour period (from 18 3" long x 1/2" deep cuts on his torso). One of the people who finds him is a doctor, and the EMTs are on-scene in under 15 minutes.
I'm looking for five things.
1. What's a reasonable estimate of how many units of blood would he receive once he got to the hospital? I'm assuming that suturing all those cuts would take a while, and that he'd still be bleeding, at least a little bit, while they were trying to replace it? So it would be more than 3 or 4 units, wouldn't it? I found one site that said 12 was average for a car crash victim; would it be more or less than that?
2. About how many stitches would it take to suture those cuts on his chest, arms, and back? (18 of them, each 3" long and 1/2" deep, give or take. (6 on his chest, 6 on his back, and 3 on each arm)
3. Three years ago, when I started writing this story, I was told that he'd be released from the hospital within 48 hours, that he was only in real danger so long as he was bleeding and until his blood volume and blood pressure were back up. (I know that it would take several weeks for his blood volume to return to normal, and that he'll most likely be tired, weaker than normal, and shaky during that time.) Does anyone know if this is true, or if I'm misremembering?
4. Would pneumonia be a logical complication, with his history of respiratory problems? I'm not actually going to give it to him. I just need a logical complication that his doctor can predict to use as a justification for keeping him in the hospital more than two days.
5. He's given two large doses of Ketamine approximately 2 1/2 hours apart. He will hallucinate during the torture and have vivd flashbacks afterwards. Could the Ketamine cause breathing problems or increase his hospital stay? Some of the research that I've done says that Ketamine can cause respiratory depression or distress, and some says it will ease breathing since it's a vasodilator. I'm not sure which to believe.
I've done dozens of Google searches so far, including: pints of blood in the human body, how much blood can a human lose before death, blood loss, define: massive blood loss, blood transfusion amounts, pints of blood lost vs. pints of blood given, average transfusion amounts, blood loss + respiratory distress, Ketamine, Ketamine reactions, Ketamine complications. I've also posted most of this question to fanfic_med.
Thanks so much in advance for anything that anyone can help with.
Set up is this: male in his late 30's, 6'2", estimated weight between 175-190 pounds. He's had some pretty serious respiratory issues in canon (pneumonic plague, to be precise), but aside from his friends mentioning the potential for him to relapse or suffer long-term affects, he doesn't seem to have had any. He's lost between 3 - 3 1/2 pints of blood over a two hour period (from 18 3" long x 1/2" deep cuts on his torso). One of the people who finds him is a doctor, and the EMTs are on-scene in under 15 minutes.
I'm looking for five things.
1. What's a reasonable estimate of how many units of blood would he receive once he got to the hospital? I'm assuming that suturing all those cuts would take a while, and that he'd still be bleeding, at least a little bit, while they were trying to replace it? So it would be more than 3 or 4 units, wouldn't it? I found one site that said 12 was average for a car crash victim; would it be more or less than that?
2. About how many stitches would it take to suture those cuts on his chest, arms, and back? (18 of them, each 3" long and 1/2" deep, give or take. (6 on his chest, 6 on his back, and 3 on each arm)
3. Three years ago, when I started writing this story, I was told that he'd be released from the hospital within 48 hours, that he was only in real danger so long as he was bleeding and until his blood volume and blood pressure were back up. (I know that it would take several weeks for his blood volume to return to normal, and that he'll most likely be tired, weaker than normal, and shaky during that time.) Does anyone know if this is true, or if I'm misremembering?
4. Would pneumonia be a logical complication, with his history of respiratory problems? I'm not actually going to give it to him. I just need a logical complication that his doctor can predict to use as a justification for keeping him in the hospital more than two days.
5. He's given two large doses of Ketamine approximately 2 1/2 hours apart. He will hallucinate during the torture and have vivd flashbacks afterwards. Could the Ketamine cause breathing problems or increase his hospital stay? Some of the research that I've done says that Ketamine can cause respiratory depression or distress, and some says it will ease breathing since it's a vasodilator. I'm not sure which to believe.
I've done dozens of Google searches so far, including: pints of blood in the human body, how much blood can a human lose before death, blood loss, define: massive blood loss, blood transfusion amounts, pints of blood lost vs. pints of blood given, average transfusion amounts, blood loss + respiratory distress, Ketamine, Ketamine reactions, Ketamine complications. I've also posted most of this question to fanfic_med.
Thanks so much in advance for anything that anyone can help with.