Blood Stopping: A Brief Study in Modern Emergency Doctoring

When it comes to emergency medical treatment doctors, first responders and militaries around the world have come a very long way from primitive cauterization of bleeding wounds.

Often as a last-ditch effort to control infection, ancient Egyptian surgeons would simply heat up a piece of metal and apply it to the wound of a victim. A very painful procedure, the wounded were often bound to limit their thrashing as they experienced an unimaginable amount of pain during the ordeal. Techniques like this one were popularly used in surgical amputations and on the battlefield.

Unlike the ghastly medical practices of ancient times, most modern means of preventing blood loss are both painless and efficient. However, thankfully for interested readers, modern emergency doctoring has not lost a bit of its excitement or intrigue.

Gauzes and tourniquets are among the most commonly used devices in modern emergency bleeding control. Typically, tourniquets are used to lessen external bleeding by restricting blood flow and applying pressure to the wound. Gauzes on the other hand are usually inserted into deep wounds in order to fully seal off any avenues of blood loss.

Gauze and tourniquets are among the most commonly used devices in modern emergency bleeding control. Typically, tourniquets are used to lessen external bleeding by restricting blood flow and applying pressure to the wound. Gauzes on the other hand are usually inserted into deep wounds in order to fully seal off any avenues of blood loss. Yet beyond these two famous life-saving instruments is a wide plethora of interesting tools used to save lives from blood loss in emergency situations.

Among these are the Reboa (resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta), foam injections - as currently being experimented by western militaries, and the XStat, a sponge-filled syringe system used to treat gunshot wounds.

The Reboa is similar to a pocket version of balloon angioplasty which is commonly used to clear arteries in the event of a backup of plaque or other harmful substances. The Reboa consists of a very long, thin tube resembling a coffee stirrer with a small inflatable balloon on one end.

In the event of a catastrophic wound, a paramedic inserts this tube into the artery from which the wound's blood is sourced. Once securely inside the balloon inflates and prevents further blood loss by halting the blood stream in the dressed area.

This procedure can only be delivered by only the most skilled hands as similar techniques are extremely difficult to perform in a relaxed setting, let alone in the middle of a catastrophic emergency. Lacerations and contusions in the pelvic area often prove difficult to manage because of their vulnerable location and the typically high blood flow through this bodily region.

Thus Reboas, being a very precise instrument, are most frequently used in stemming blood loss from wounds in the pelvic area. The research and technology necessary to make this medical feat a possibility is no small wonder. It's shocking to think how similar crises would look today should doctors still be rubbing dirt on wounds instead of using the Reboa.

The XStat resembles an oversized syringe and upon first glance looks like a gaudy pill dispenser. Those pills however, aren't brittle, nor are they edible. They are in fact, extremely compressed sponge tablets which, when inserted into a gunshot or shrapnel wound, expand to over six times their current size. Corpsmen in the U.S. find this to be extremely useful in high-intensity situations because of it's ease of use and it's ability to deployed rapidly.

The XStat was designed to serve as a "fire -and - forget" system to give medics the ability to tend to one wound and quickly move on to the next. Most agree the XStat's application, although sometimes still painful, is far cleaner and succinct than manually stuffing a bullet wound full of loose gauze.

Instead of spending a full three-to-five minutes packing a gaping shrapnel wound under perilous conditions, medics now spend just several seconds deploying the Xstat and are back in the fight.

Finally, technology of the modern age has offered a new form of emergency bleeding control in the utilization of foam. Foam technology has been employed for a variety of purposes in emergency situations, namely as a fire retardant in car crashes and building fires. Now in 2014, scientists have begun to experiment with it as a stemming agent for internal wounds for trauma victims. Foam is naturally malleable, light and expandable, making it an excellent tool for reaching hard-to-access wounds inside the human body. Foam is especially useful for treating contusions under the skin that emergency responders would deem high-risk when operated on.

With sterile, quickly expanding foam, scientists hope to soon be able to treat crash, battery, fall and many other trauma victims in a way that has never been done before. This technology is scheduled to be implemented in several national militaries around the world before the end of 2014. Although it must look quite off-putting to see a foam bulge under the skin expanding, most would agree it sure beats bleeding to death from internal wounds. Unfortunately for many a brave warrior one hundred years ago, severe internal wounds were once death sentences and not so easily treatable.

Indeed, man has come a very long way from treating wounds with hot metal, smoke, dirt and feces. Even today's most simplistic emergency solutions overshadow the most advanced techniques employed one hundred years ago. Luckily for the wounded and injured, medicine and technology will walk hand-in-hand helping to make surgeons' and emergency responders' jobs all the easier.

When looking back a hundred years from now, it may very well be said, "in ancient times the most advanced blood stemming instruments were the primitive Xstat, Reboa and foam technology." For the mean time, however, these inventions are worthy of awe and have certainly captured our undying interest and sincere appreciation.