Blood is a specialised connective tissue composed of plasma and cellular elements (red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets) that functions in oxygen transport, immune response, and haemostasis.[1]
The blood a learner sees in these models is a substitute. The fake blood recorded below is dyed saline, water tinted with red dye or paint, or red liquid latex, used to make bleeding visible during training.
| Material | Visual | Tactile | Simulator | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saline + red food colouring | Peripheral Intravenous Catheterization Trainer, Hemorrhage Control Simulator (Malik) | Dyed-saline blood analogue | ||
| Normal Saline + red dye | Kei REAL CRIC Trainer | Red-dyed saline delivered through IV tubing from a reservoir bag to simulate bleeding during vertical cricothyrotomy incision. | ||
| Water | Tourniquet Simulator, Wound Packing Simulator | Pumped circulating fluid | ||
| Red school paint + water | Synthetic Tourniquet Training Model (Souza Lima) | Red school paint mixed with water to a near-blood consistency, driven from a modified saline reservoir by an air pump so it gushes at the simulated wound. | ||
| Saline with food colouring + corn starch | - | - | Massive Hemoptysis Simulator (New) | Saline (or water) tinted with food colouring, with corn starch suspended in it to increase the fluid's opacity, as the simulated blood, fed from an external bag through roller-clamped tubing into selected segmental bronchi to drive controllable airway bleeding (New et al. 2024). |
| Saline stained with red food dye | Cricothyrotomy Simulator (Calvo) | A 1 L saline bag stained red with food dye, held in a pressuriser and fed through a tunnelled IV set; the pork-belly subcutaneous layer is infiltrated so incising the skin produces visible bleeding (Calvo et al. 2021). | ||
| Water + red dye | Intra-abdominal Bleeding Simulator (Fernandes) | Water tinted with red dye as a simulated-blood substitute; one one-litre reservoir feeds the aorta and is squeezed for pulsatile arterial flow, a second feeds the vena cava under gravity (Fernandes et al. 2023). | ||
| Red food colouring in water | Suction-Assisted Laryngoscopy and Airway Decontamination Simulator (Kumar) | Red-coloured water[2] | ||
| Red liquid latex | UGHE Low-Cost Soft-Tissue Simulation Module | The wound debridement model — a large sponge cut to represent wounded skin and tissue, with vinyl pieces set in the cuts as debris — was painted with red liquid latex to represent blood (Wittenberg et al. 2025).[3] |
| Authors | Arturopelayo, Ian-laurel |
|---|---|
| License | CC-BY-SA-4.0 |
| Cite as | Arturopelayo, Ian-laurel (2025–2026). "TissueDB/Tissues/Blood". Appropedia. Retrieved September 29, 2026. |
