Tuesday, February 4, 2014

New Invention Seals Gunshot Wounds In 15 Seconds

XStat. RevMedx

How A Simple New Invention Seals A Gunshot Wound In 15 Seconds -- Popular Science

An Oregon startup has developed a pocket-size device that uses tiny sponges to stop bleeding fast.

When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery. It’s an agonizing process that doesn't always work--if bleeding hasn't stopped after three minutes of applying direct pressure, the medic must pull out all the gauze and start over again. It’s so painful, “you take the guy’s gun away first,” says former U.S. Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh.

Even with this emergency treatment, many soldiers still bleed to death; hemorrhage is a leading cause of death on the battlefield. "Gauze bandages just don't work for anything serious," says Steinbaugh, who tended to injured soldiers during more than a dozen deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. When Steinbaugh retired in April 2012 after a head injury, he joined an Oregon-based startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers who were working on a better way to stop bleeding.

Read more ....

Update: This High Tech Injection Heals Gunshot Wounds in 15 Seconds -- Betabeat

My Comment: I heard about this tech a few weeks ago from a good friend who works in a trauma unit. It will not surprise me to see this as standard issue for medical teams (both public and in the military) very soon .... and it will save many lives.

2 comments:

Nicholas Darkwater said...

I have a son who is a medic with the US Army Rangers, and he says he has used it with "varied results".

War News Updates Editor said...

Thank you Nicholas Darkwater for your feedback.