How much blood loss is too much?
Pelvic fractures occur in 8% of major trauma patients. You can improvise a pelvic binder. IED induced injuries resulting in traumatic lower limb amputation are associated with a 22% rate of pelvic fracture; half of which are unstable ring fractures. …
Change in CAT tourniquets from 6th to 7th generation In October 2015, the 6th generation Combat Application Tourniquet, or CAT, with its double-eyelet buckle was discontinued, in favor of the 7th generation CAT which has only a single-eyelet routed buckle. …
Knowing the quantity of blood loss helps estimate the likelihood of shock Having a sense of how much blood a trauma patient “spilled” on the ground can be very helpful for understanding and estimating the casualty’s potential for shock. Unfortunately, …
In our race to use tourniquets for controlling hemorrhage, we often lose sight of the value of good direct pressure as a hemorrhage control technique. Proven commercially available tourniquets are almost always going to be better options for controlling significant …
Recent news articles describe many cases of the public placing “tourniquets” without windlasses on injured individuals to stop bleeding. However, if you look a little deeper, most of those well-intentioned “tourniquet” applications weren’t actually tourniquets at all and may endanger …
A friend I have known since junior high and I were recently discussing tourniquets and hemorrhage control. While not an unusual discussion topic among my friends, Robert Meyer Burnett does not work in EMS or emergency medicine. Nor is he …