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Luis Agote (September 22, 1868 – November 12, 1954) was anArgentinephysician and researcher. He was the first to perform a non-directblood transfusion usingsodium citrate as ananticoagulant.[1] The procedure took place in Rawson hospital in the city ofBuenos Aires on November 9, 1914. Agote was the first to perform this procedure inthe Americas. Agote worked independently and separately from theBelgian surgeonAlbert Hustin, who discovered that sodium citrate in tolerable quantities could anticoagulate blood for transfusion on March 27, 1914.
Agote was the son of a politician. He studied first in theColegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and then at theUniversity of Buenos AiresFaculty of Medicine, where he was also a teacher. He graduated as a doctor in 1893 with a thesis about suppurative hepatitis. He became Secretary of the National Department of Hygiene in 1894 and became head of the leper hospital in 1895 on the island of Martin Garcia. He was elected Congressman in 1910 and Senator in 1916 of the legislature in Argentina.
The first recorded blood transfusion was made between dogs by the English doctorRichard Lower around 1666. In 1667, French scientist Juan Bautista Denys transfused a human with animal blood. In 1900,Karl Landsteiner identified some of the blood substances responsible for the agglutination of red blood cells, identifying blood groups for the first time and some of their incompatibilities.
Direct transfusions were still not practiced at the beginning of the 20th century because it was impossible to keep unaltered blood outside the body for later use. After 6–12 minutes, coagulation begins manifested initially by a gradual increase ofviscosity that terminates with almost complete solidification.Coagulation is the defense of an organism to staunch wounds and minimize hemorrhages. Now we know that clotting is almost totally formed by platelets fastened by a network of filaments offibrin.
Fibrin does not normally exist in blood and is created from protein plasma by the action of thethrombin enzyme. Similarly, thrombin is not naturally present in blood and is created by the precursor substance prothombrin, in a process that involves platelets, some exiting from calcium and substances produced by lesioned materials. Since clots are not created if there is a lack of some of these elements, the addition ofsodium citrate (which eliminates calcium ions from blood) prevents its formation.