What do you think are the odds of walking into the site of an aircraft accident as a ground team member and finding victims with puncture wounds?
Statistically zero.
Quote from: Eclipse on July 20, 2016, 01:43:59 PMStatistically zero.Seriously? Could you maybe at least try to explain that answer? No chance you will ever see it because you do not do ground team? No one has ever been punctured? No punctures ever in CAP history of SAR missions? You have never personally seen it? What exactly is that comment supposed to represent?
Here ya go: The new U.S. military technology is easy for first responders to administer and increases the survival rate for severe internal injuries nine-fold.DARPA Wound Stasis FoamThe organization that pioneered global positioning systems, voice recognition software, and ARPANET—the Internet’s earliest ancestor—is now putting research and development dollars to work creating innovative technologies to keep soldiers (and civilians) safe.The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has collaborated with Arsenal Medical, Inc. to develop a revolutionary foam agent that can halt bleeding from severe internal abdominal wounds for up to three hours, with a survival rate of 72 percent. The Department of Defense (DoD) began the Wound Stasis foam project in 2010 in an effort to improve survival rates during the “Golden Hour:" the 60 minutes following an injury in which a wounded soldier is stabilized and moved to a treatment facility.“Battlefield care is provided in austere, often hostile conditions, so the Department of Defense aims to transport injured troops off the battlefield and to appropriate healthcare facilities as quickly as possible," says Brian Holloway, DARPA Program Manager for the Wound Stasis System program, in an email to Healthline. "During the war in Iraq, DoD set a standard of one hour for this to happen; thus, the term ‘the Golden Hour.'"Because approximately 50 percent of potentially preventable deaths from battlefield injuries are due to abdominal hemorrhage and delays in hemorrhage control during transportation to medical facilities, the need for rapid, far-forward hemorrhage treatments is great,” Holloway says.According to the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, this type of internal bleeding is the leading cause of potentially survivable deaths on the battlefield. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that internal wounds can’t be compressed with tourniquets or dressings. The Wound Stasis foam, which is designed to be administered by a combat medic, expands to fill a soldier’s intact abdominal cavity and can be easily removed by a trauma surgeon once the soldier reaches a hospital.“Currently, there is no FDA-approved battlefield treatment that a medic can apply for these types of injuries; evacuation to a surgical setting is the only option. We created the Wound Stasis program to help increase treatment options and save lives,” says Holloway.The foam itself is a polyurethane polymer administered directly into the abdomen via two injections. When the injected materials meet, they expand to more than 30 times their original volume, forming a solid mass of foam that contours to the patient’s internal organs without adhering to tissues or absorbing blood. The entire foam block can be removed by hand in less than one minute following an incision by a surgeon.“We knew that the optimal product would need to be easily carried by medics on the battlefield. We knew that we would need a small amount of material that could fill the large abdominal cavity, but that could also be removable. Given these needs, it was intuitive to us that a foam material would be the optimal solution,” says Upma Sharma, Director of Material Science and Engineering at Arsenal Medical and Program Director for the Wound Stasis foam project in an email to Healthline. “We took an extremely thoughtful approach when we began engineering the foam, knowing that it would have to be optimized over a number of independent variables," she added. "In total, we developed 1,200 foams so that we can control each critical parameter, including expansion and hydrophobicity.”The Wound Stasis foam has performed so well on pig models of human injuries (increasing survival rates from eight percent to more than 70 percent) that DARPA has awarded Arsenal Medical a $15.5 million contract to perform Phase II testing. To date, DARPA has given Arsenal $22.5 million to develop the foam product.“Work on the program will continue in pursuit of the technical requirements for FDA approval and program transition to end-user organizations,” says Holloway. “Our goal is to move as fast as possible in bringing this device to fruition.”Researchers presented pre-clinical data on the foam treatment at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in Kauai, Hawaii in September. Holloway is hopeful that the Wound Stasis foam, once approved by the FDA for use in human patients, will save the lives of many soldiers wounded in bomb blasts, as well as civilians who’ve suffered trauma in car accidents and elsewhere.“Although DARPA's focus is on defense applications—particularly, in this case, improving survival rates for battlefield injuries—any such product, once commercialized, could impact civilian scenarios in which internal abdominal bleeding is likely to factor,” says Holloway. “It's highly plausible that such a product could become part of the toolkit for civilian first responders.”
Sounds amazingly like "Great Stuff" foam http://www.homedepot.com/p/GREAT-STUFF-16-oz-Big-Gap-Filler-Insulating-Foam-Sealant-248314/100029171
Quote from: LSW on July 20, 2016, 01:42:37 PMWhat do you think are the odds of walking into the site of an aircraft accident as a ground team member and finding victims with puncture wounds?Statistically zero.
Quote from: Eclipse on July 20, 2016, 01:43:59 PMQuote from: LSW on July 20, 2016, 01:42:37 PMWhat do you think are the odds of walking into the site of an aircraft accident as a ground team member and finding victims with puncture wounds?Statistically zero.But a very real possibility. The "statistically zero" card doesn't play well with safety and preparedness.
I say go ahead and put one in your IFAK(great for nose bleeds). I see alot of untrained and unqualified people in CAP carrying around med equipment they should not have. People in CAP need to stop playing EMS.
I really hate to pile on, but I cannot discourage this strongly enough. While I typically don't appeal to authority, I'm an Army Medic with nearly 10 years ARNG side and a deployment to Afghanistan. I've recertified as a 68W 3 times, attended BCT3, taken part in live tissue labs, a Combat Medic Mentorship Course, and conducted thousands of hours of OJT and real-world work as a Healthcare/Trauma Specialist on the military side. Do not pack tampons to provide bleeding control for penetrating trauma of any kind. That's not what they're designed for. They're designed with a very specific purpose, and an untrained person could cause significant harm if trying to employ them in the manner suggested by the OP. The Army standard (for non 68Ws, per the AWT Guide) is to pack Kerlix (or Combat Gauze/other hemostatic gauze if available) into the wound in order to control bleeding. The 68W standard is to pack Kerlix (or Combat Gauze/other hemostatic gauze if available). The Marine Corps standard is to pack the wound with Kerlix (or Combat Gauze/other hemostatic gauze if available). The Navy standard is the same. The Air Force standard is the same. These are the organizations that deal with this type of injury on a regular basis. They are, arguably, the source for standards and best practices regarding penetrating trauma.The bottom line is this: What were you trained to do? What are you, as a CAP member, allowed to do? If your response to those questions does not include "packing wounds with tampons," then you're wrong if you're packing them in your 24 hour gear with any purpose other than addressing menstrual bleeding.
I carry them in my gear, but for a very different reason. Compact emergency fire starting material. :-)
Never had much of use for them otherwise, except for well, the obvious use - I do find female cadets forget to pack things, and do carry a supply to cadet events.
Quote from: CAPAPRN on September 26, 2016, 07:34:10 PMNever had much of use for them otherwise, except for well, the obvious use - I do find female cadets forget to pack things, and do carry a supply to cadet events.This has been addressed earlier, but the difference between a pad and a tampon being provided to a female cadet can be significant, especially since Toxic Shock Syndrome is no small issue (especially given the stress and potential field environments at CAP events).If you don't know what Toxic Shock Syndrome is, you should look it up. And then take the tampons out of gear... 1st Lt Raduenz