Counterfeit tourniquets are a serious problem

🕖 Reading/viewing Time, 6 minutes

They may look like legitimate commercial versions but are not made to the same quality standard. Know your gear. In this excerpt from our online class learn about the problem – want more? Get the full brief from our TC2 course.

You might also want to read about our TC2 student who found her school district was knowingly issuing counterfeit tourniquets during National Stop the Bleed Month.

UPDATE 29 August 2019:

Email solicitations to buy counterfeit and substandard tourniquets

We received an email from Summer this morning.

It’s bad enough that counterfeit CAT tourniquets are so widely available through Amazon and the Internet. It’s even worse when a manufacturer of those counterfeit and substandard tourniquets reaches out to you unsolicited offering to sell you some.

UPDATE: JANUARY, 2023

Although copies of the 6th Generation CAT tourniquets out of China are common, we had never seen a Generation 7 copy until very recently. North American Rescue has confirmed this is the first Gen7 CAT counterfeit.

Some question why any of this matters: some say “imitation is the greatest form of flattery.” But we know nothing about the manufacturing specs of this copy and have no idea its effectiveness on casualties. Looking the same and performing the same are NOT the same.