XStat plugs gunshot and shrapnel wounds faster and more effectively than the standard battlefield first aid. Currently, medics treat hemorrhage by stuffing gauze as deep as five inches into an injury—a painful process that doesn’t always work. Of soldiers who died between October 2001 and June 2009 of wounds that weren’t immediately fatal, blood loss was the killer in an estimated 80 percent of cases.
The 2.5-ounce syringe slides deep into a injury, such a bullet track, and deposits pill-size sponges that soak up blood and rapidly expand to stem bleeding from an artery. Each sponge is coated with chitosan, a substance that clots blood and fights infection. The FDA says the sponges are safe to leave in the body for up to four hours, allowing enough time for a patient to get to an operating room. To ensure they don’t get left inside a wound, X-shaped markers make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.
Simple Invention For Sealing Gunshot Wounds Gets FDA Approval
Of course, depends on the price but I guess it might be a step up than shoving tampons down a wound.
Hat tip to ITMOTR
ETA on market? Price?
How much better than a tampon is it, really?
hemostatic agent added.
Good point.
I could spend an afternoon applying hemostatic agents to tampons for the FA kit, but that sounds like work, and I’d compromise the sterility.
Closer, and a little bit more, before we gaming nerds can see the biofoam used in the Halo video game/media lore come to life. Expanding, coagulant and antisceptic foam meant to support a body until it can be rushed to triage.
I am not into the gaming stuff but the foam is like hemostatic/temp flesh or something like that?
A bit.
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Biofoam
I raise you.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ymqpLX70RqY
Its called veti gel and was apparently invented by an NYU undergrad.
I believe it was Ambulance Driver who convinced me that this wasn’t as good as Combat Gauze. Might have been one of the other EMT gunnies who do medblogs, though. . .
It might be, but I also see it from the point of view that it can be used by people without heavy rescue training and offers a certain degree of separation from the wound for those that might be skittish at the sight of blood.
Solution? Keep both