What makes internal bleeding different from the blood that regularly flows through the body and comes out when you get a paper cut or some form of surface scratch/injury?

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What makes internal bleeding different from the blood that regularly flows through the body and comes out when you get a paper cut or some form of surface scratch/injury?

In: Biology

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The reason a papercut is not too bad is because the amount of blood that comes out is very little as the capilary blood vessels that are cut is very tiny. When you have issues with blood loss it is usually because a bigger artery have been cut which can cause huge amount of blood to be lost so that you do not have much remaining blood circulating through your body delivering oxygen from your lungs to your cells. Internal bleeding is a type of blood loss however in this case the blood that is leaking out does not end up on the outside of your body but rather will fill up areas between your organs. The internal bleeding version of a paper cut would be a bruise. If it is big it can still cause the same issues with blood loss as the blood while techically it is inside your body it is not part of the circulation system and will not flow around the body delivering oxygen and other neutrients. There are a few things to be worried about with internal bleeding. Firstly it is harder to see from the outside, there is no big flow of red blood pointing to the issue. Secondly the blood could also squash other organs making them stop working, this is mostly an issue for the lungs and brain. But big internal bleeding anywhere would still cause issues with blood loss.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your skin has evolved with the expectation that you will get minor cuts a lot. So your skin has tiny little blood vessels that are easy for the right blood components to seal up, and easy to heal. The blood goes outside, which means it kinda goes away (and you need to drink more to replace it, sure, but that’s easy).

Internal bleeding means not only is blood going where it shouldn’t inside your body, but it’s coming out of damaged blood vessels that are hard for the body to repair by itself.

Anonymous 0 Comments

When you rupture an internal organ, you bleed like you do with a cut or head wound on the outside. You’re injured internally and blood is going where it’s not supposed to be.

I ruptured my small intestine as a child in a monkey bar accident. The pain was incredible, I started puking blood, eventually I was puking bile, and without emergency surgery within hours I would have bleed to death. Only from the inside.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Typically it just means that blood is escaping into a space that shouldn’t be filled with blood. In large cavities such as your chest, pelvis or certain compartments in your leg, you can lose a LOT of blood; sometimes without knowing.

In comparison, an external bleed is usually obvious and can be quickly treated.

Treating an internal bleed is much harder since you may need to get inside past viral structures in difficult to reach spaces to stop it.

They also tend to be more severe since a paper cut is only affecting the tiny blood vessels in the skin, whereas an internal bleed may involve a vessel that is a few centimetres in diameter.

Source: med student, top of my head, feel free to correct me!

Anonymous 0 Comments

No doctor but i think scratches and small cuts are tiny blood vessels and internal bleeding is like major damage to organs or arteries and a pool of blood fills up inside you.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Well its like an outside cut, but its inside you. Its harder to tell it is there, because you cannot see inside you, and harder to fix, because i cannot put bandaids inside you. And there are things in your like lungs, that having blood in is bad, while blood outside your body is not bad for you.