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chairfairy t1_j9ewtc4 wrote

Reply to comment by EnchantedCatto in when a limb gets amputated, how do they stop the flow of blood? by EnchantedCatto

It has a return path through all the branches that come off it before the amputation point.

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Bax_Cadarn t1_j9fbmpq wrote

Close but not precisely. Think of it like a road system. Whdn You drive off a highway going north, You don't use the same way to go south. You need to drive to a smaller road to later rejoin increasingly larger roads until You enter the main flow from another side.

In ither words arteries branch off into increasingly smaller vessels up to the capillaries, then those collect into bigger and bigger veins

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concealed_cat t1_j9hqoeh wrote

But if you're driving down a freeway, and then encounter a road block 3 miles past the last exit, then what do you do? The cars will just accumulate there with no obvious way out of there. If you cut the artery at a location without any branches, there will be some blood there that will just sit in place, won't it?

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Bax_Cadarn t1_j9hqyhn wrote

Some will clot at the end, some will leave by freshly built microscopic roads, some will go up a bit and leave by the past few junctions afaik. For more details, ask a vascular surgeon ;-)

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chairfairy t1_j9ftns7 wrote

The implication was that the branches lead to "increasingly smaller vessels up to capillaries". Not sure where else someone would think they go...

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Bax_Cadarn t1_j9fvpam wrote

You made it sound like the blood would go "nothing to see here" and turn back through the arteries. I made it so people wouldn't get confused.

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