The current state of the art appears to be stuffing gauze in to stop the bleeding until you get the patient to the hospital. (It's for when you can't use a tourniquet, eg pelvis and shoulder wounds).
This thing is really cool on multiple levels:
* Its applicator gets deep into bullet wounds more accurately and quickly than stuffing gauze.
* It injects highly-compacted foam bits into the wound, so they can fit into cavities better
* They then expand when they get wet (from blood in this case) to fill those spaces quickly, but also in a sense, through expansion, they apply their own pressure to the wound.
* Once stable, surgeons need to make sure they get all the stuff out, so each foam bit has a radiopaque indicator that shows up in Xrays.
* They made a version with a telescoping syringe handle (like some collapsible tripod legs) so they could fit more into presumably limited rucksack space)
Apparently it was partially funded by the US military, who thought at first foam would be the solution, but blood pressure was enough to wash the foam out of the wound. Sponges "enlarge to fill up the wound, but they also stick to wet surfaces, and build up enough force to ensure the bleeding comes to a stop."
Very interesting. I hope this is something I never have to use. And in the event I do need it, I probably won't remember where I put it.
Great product. Suddenly makes my own products seem a bit meaningless in comparison.
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