Luis Agote was an Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 physician and researcher. He was one of the first to perform a non-direct blood transfusion

Blood transfusion

Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...

 using sodium citrate

Sodium citrate

Trisodium citrate has the chemical formula of Na3C6H5O7. It is sometimes referred to simply as sodium citrate, though sodium citrate can refer to any of the three sodium salts of citric acid. It possesses a saline, mildly tart flavor. For this reason, citrates of certain alkaline and alkaline earth...

 as an anticoagulant

Anticoagulant

An anticoagulant is a substance that prevents coagulation of blood. A group of pharmaceuticals called anticoagulants can be used in vivo as a medication for thrombotic disorders. Some anticoagulants are used in medical equipment, such as test tubes, blood transfusion bags, and renal dialysis...

 (the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 doctor Albert Hustin

Albert Hustin

Albert Hustin was a Belgian medical doctor. He was the second to successfully practice non-direct blood transfusions with sodium citrate used as an anticoagulant. Luis Agote, from Argentina, was the first doctor to practice this kind of transfusion....

, working independently, was the second one to do so). The procedure took place in Rawson hospital in the city of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

 on November 9, 1914.

Biography

He studied first in the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires

Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires

Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires is a public high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the tradition of the European gymnasium it provides a free education that includes classical languages such as Latin and Greek. The school is one of the most prestigious in Argentina...

, and then at the University of Buenos Aires

University of Buenos Aires

The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...

, where he was also a teacher. He graduated as a doctor in 1893 with a thesis about hepatitis supurada. 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 Deputy in 1910 and Senator in 1916 of the legislature in Argentina.

First Recorded Transfusions

The first recorded blood transfusion was made between dogs by the English doctor Richard Lower around 1666. In 1667, the French scientist Juan Bautista Denys made a transfusion to a human using animal blood. In 1900, Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner , was an Austrian-born American biologist and physician of Jewish origin. He is noted for having first distinguished the main blood groups in 1900, having developed the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the...

 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 of viscosity

Viscosity

Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...

 that terminates with almost complete solidification. Coagulation

Coagulation

Coagulation is a complex process by which blood forms clots. It is an important part of hemostasis, the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel, wherein a damaged blood vessel wall is covered by a platelet and fibrin-containing clot to stop bleeding and begin repair of the damaged vessel...

 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 of fibrin

Fibrin

Fibrin is a fibrous, non-globular protein involved in the clotting of blood. It is a fibrillar protein that is polymerised to form a "mesh" that forms a hemostatic plug or clot over a wound site....

.

Fibrin do not normally exist in blood and are created starting from protein plasma by the action of the thrombin

Thrombin

Thrombin is a "trypsin-like" serine protease protein that in humans is encoded by the F2 gene. Prothrombin is proteolytically cleaved to form thrombin in the first step of the coagulation cascade, which ultimately results in the stemming of blood loss...

 enzyme. Similarly, thrombin are not naturally present in blood and are 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 of sodium citrate

Sodium citrate

Trisodium citrate has the chemical formula of Na3C6H5O7. It is sometimes referred to simply as sodium citrate, though sodium citrate can refer to any of the three sodium salts of citric acid. It possesses a saline, mildly tart flavor. For this reason, citrates of certain alkaline and alkaline earth...

(which eliminates calcium ions from blood) prevents its formation.

External links

• Agote's short biography (Spanish)
• Biography (Spanish)