Without
instant care, a seriously injured fighter can undoubtedly drain to death while
being transported to medical care station. Two conventional medications -
medicated gauze pads and tourniquets - regularly can't prevent the blood loss
from a serious wound at the neck, groin or shoulder.
Undergraduates
from John Hopkins have invented injectable foam to curb the bleeding where head
or limb is connected to the torso. It will be a crucial treatment in the first
hour of the injury by applying pressure on the wound.
"The
problem is that damage from bullets and bone fragments deep inside a junctional
wound is not always visible from outside the body, and a regular clotting agent
may not be able to reach the origin of the bleeding," said Sydney Rooney,
leader of the biomedical engineering student team that sought to solve this
problem. "We came up with a foam injection system that fills the wound
area and blocks the blood loss."
"Our
project has been dealing very literally with a life and death matter,"
Rooney said. "At the end of the day, that provided some extra motivation
for our team."
"The
foam fills up the wound opening, hardens and applies pressure to the walls of
the cavity," said Allie Sanzi, who participated in the project during her
freshman year. "This should lead to more effective targeting and treatment
at the source of the bleeding."
The
understudies' venture was proposed and regulated by two specialists at All
Children's Hospital, a Johns Hopkins Medicine office in St. Petersburg, Fla.
All Children's serves as a clinical preparing site for doctors in the Green
Berets, Army Rangers, Navy Seals, and Marine Special Forces who require
pediatric crisis reaction experience. This permitted the student innovators to
meet with these groups and the specialists to examine the new venture and its models.
One
of the supporting specialists, Paul D. Danielson, a military veteran who is
presently therapeutic chief for pediatric surgery at All Children's, said the
learners' gadget looks very guaranteeing, despite the fact that it’s still at
the model stage.
"I
don't think its pie in the sky at all," he said. "I think it's a very
viable solution to a problem that's been plaguing us on the battlefield."
Another
of the students' sponsors and advisers, All Children's pediatric surgeon Nicole
Chandler, was impressed by the undergrads' solid grasp of design and clinical
issues. "I think the students did a wonderful job on this project,"
she said. "Their understanding of some medical concepts was beyond that of
many medical students. They came up with a simple, intuitive design that has
the potential to save many lives."
Thus such useful innovations are pushing the growth of advanced wound care and closure market. The market has become significant in effective treatment of
chronic wounds. A latest research projects the market to attain a value of 20.5
billion by 2020.
