Counterfeit tourniquets are a serious problem
They may look like legitimate commercial versions but counterfeits are not made to the same quality standard. Know your gear.
Researched and written by Mike Shertz, MD/18D, not AI
🕖 Reading/viewing Time, 7 minutes
UPDATE: Fifty counterfeit CAT like tourniquets (from two different manufacturers) were compared to 25 7th-generation CAT tourniquets applied to a manikin leg with pressure sensors.
- The counterfeits generated less than 25% of the force of a similarly applied gen 7 CAT. Both were placed with the slack pulled out and only three windlass turns.
- The counterfeit also had a 4% catastrophic breakage rate (7th gen CAT zero breakage).
This is once again data that the counterfeit “CAT like” tourniquets widely sold out of China are inadequate for hemorrhage control.
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.
