Blood Types

Learning about blood types can be a bit confusing at first.But the concept of blood types isimportant for several reasons:Blood typing isused frequently in clinical medicine because the use of blood transfusions is common, and therefore so is blood banking and related activities.Knowing one ' sown blood type is important for future medical procedures —perhaps even a life-threatening emergency.Concepts of blood typing carry over into other types of tissue typing—a concept useful in transplant medicine.Blood typing is a greatintroduction to basic concepts of immunology(something you ' ll be coming to soon in your A&P course) like antigens, antibodies, agglutination reactions, self vs. nonself,and more.It ' s just one of those thingsyou have to learn in A&P. Trust us, we know this will be useful to you later on —even if you don ' t think so now.Here ' s a great video that lays out the essential concepts very briefly —in aneasy-to-understandway. Sometimes, an explanation that ' sa bit differentthan that in your textbook or class discussion helps a new concept " click " in your brain.Watch the brief video What are Blood Types: One brief note: the video states that antigens are proteins. That ' s often true. But in blood typing, the A and B antigens are actually sugars. The Rh antigens are proteins. Not a big deal —they were trying to keep it simple for you.Here ' s a copy of thechart of ABO blood types used in the video. You may...
Source: The A and P Student - Category: Universities & Medical Training Tags: cardiovascular immunity videos why know this? Source Type: blogs