• Question: what happens when you damage a vein?

    Asked by anon-205627 to adeliegorce, Affelia, Gabriel, Jose Angel, Kathryn, Russell on 12 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Kathryn Boast

      Kathryn Boast answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      The dangerous thing to damage is an artery – these carry blood away from your heart and they’re really high pressure. So if you cut an artery, the beating of your heart can push lots of blood out of the hole in the artery very quickly.
      In a vein, the blood is at much lower pressure – more like a gentle bathroom tap than a high pressure garden hose! So it’s not as dangerous if you damage a vein. It’s a good idea to put a bit of pressure on it (press down on the wound) to stop the bleeding, but once it’s stopped, it will probably just heal itself.
      If you become a blood donor, they put a big needle into a vein in your arm. Then they wait about ten minutes, and about a pint of blood will come out. Then they take the needle out and you put pressure on it, and it seals up and is completely better after a couple of days 🙂 I’ve given blood quite a few times, so I guess I’ve tried this out quite a bit!

    • Photo: Gabriel Gallardo

      Gabriel Gallardo answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      You bleed a bit. In fact when you donate blood or give a blood sample at the doctor’s office, they take the blood from a vein in your arm. It should heal fine after covering and putting pressue on the wound, as Kathryn says.
      If you damage an artery, though, then that’s much more dangerous. High pressure blood would squirt out from that wound and it would be morbidly funny. You would really have to take care of that quite quickly, because otherwise you could die of severe blood loss.

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