Blood Types

Learning about blood types can be a bit confusing at first.But the concept of blood types is important for several reasons:Blood typing is used frequently in clinical medicine because the use of blood transfusions is common, and therefore so is blood banking and related activities.Knowing one's own 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 great introduction 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 things you 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 an easy-to-understand way. Sometimes, an explanation that's a bit different than 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 the chart of ABO blood types used in the video.  You m...
Source: The A and P Student - Category: Medical Students Tags: cardiovascular immunity videos why know this? Source Type: blogs