Hello, my name is Dr. Jeffrey Guy. You're listening to the podcast, ICU rounds.

This week, there's been a significant amount of discussion regarding the topic of polyheam.

Polyhem is a synthetic blood substitute that has been around for several years, but has been in the testing phase,

and has been a source of significant controversy

both during the production of the test and certainly most recently

this week in an article and an editorial that appeared

in the Journal of the American Medical Association. When we think about

the necessity for artificial blood, it becomes

rather simple to see why folks would have an interest in the development of artificial

blood or artificial hemoglobin. Particularly in regards to military application and pre-hospital application.

The use of blood in a pre-hospital

or military setting becomes logistically difficult

for several reasons.

First of all, blood has a relatively short shelf life.

There are issues regarding refrigeration of packed red blood cells,

there are issues regarding cross-matching, viral transmission and so forth.

Therefore, a holy grail that has been searched after is the production of an oxygen-carrying

resuscitative fluid that could be used in replace of blood that would be readily available,

have a longer shelf life, and not perhaps require refrigeration.

Such a product would be used very easily in a military setting in a downrange situation

under austere conditions such as pre-hospital environments or even frontier medical environments.

Now the difference is that when we look at the polyheme product, polyhem is a polymerized form

...