New battlefield treatment to give soldiers fighting chance at survival

Washington: A new treatment to prevent blood loss from a deep wound at the neck, shoulder or groin in soldiers has been found.

Johns Hopkins University students have invented an injectable foam system which is designed to stop profuse bleeding from a wound where a limb or the head is connected to the torso and can be used to help the wounded soldiers.

The new invention is designed to apply pressure and curb blood loss during the critical first hour during which a wounded soldier is moved to a site that provides more advanced medical help.

According to the Sydney Rooney, leader of the biomedical engineering student team, the new battlefield treatment is needed as tourniquets and medicated gauze pads with a clotting agent are difficult to apply effectively to deep wounds at these junctional body sites, which made them come up with a foam injection system that fills the wound area and blocks the blood loss.

She sited that the problem with traditional treatments is that the damage from bullets and bone fragments deep inside a junctional wound is not always visible from outside the body.

Rooney added that with their treatment alternative, they aim at bringing the wounded soldiers to a medical facility within 60 minutes, which is the so-called golden hour during which trauma care is most successful, and prevent them from losing more than half of their blood volume in the process.

The student inventors showcased their device at the annual Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Design Day event, organized by the university's Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.