Comment by robbiep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robbiep | Hacker News Reader

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So a few people mention that this is a really revolutionary product and someone suggests that it should be in every first aid kit.

It's certainly cool. But apart from a few specialised applications this is not really a game changer. This is because the best defence against bleeding is tamponade. As in, a finger applying pressure. I work in an emergency department and recently we had a trauma patient that was bleeding. The trauma fellow was doing his assessment and a emergency consultant was getting very anxious and stating that the patient had to go to theatre right now as he was bleeding out. The trauma fellow was trying to complete his primary survey and wanted the emergency specialist to shut up so he stuck his finger in the wound, the patient stopped bleeding, and he turned around and got on with the rest of the survey.

The point is that bleeding is very rarely life threatening, and te couple of applications where is would be are military and intra operative.

The intra operative application would be particularly useful when a patient had a lacerated spleen or liver or when these organs are operated on. Currently we use a product called geloseal to stop bleeding on these organs - it works pretty well. But if this product works as suggested it may be better.

No-one needs this in their first aid kit, and until it is approved for use in surgery I don't think we will save any lives with it, but it is still a very cool product.

Sticking a finger in the wound works for small wounds. But what about large wounds or longs cuts of multiple centimeters where tamponade is not that easy? Wouldn't this gel also be used as a way to free the doctor's hands, allowing him/her to focus on other emergencies?

It's pretty much always that easy. Even for big long wounds. You can apply pressure to the wound, or to the artery proximal to the wound. If one doctor needs his hands then a nurse/junior doctor/medical student is recruited to stand there for up to hours

I agree with you, but you speak from the perspective of an doctor in an ER (and use medical terminology). In first aid, one would not put a finger in the wound. I would like to clear this up for laypersons:

It's either direct pressure on the wound, if possible with some padding, like this: http://www.roteskreuz.at/typo3temp/pics/17_EH_Blutung-Arm_39... If you don't have gloves, or while putting them on, have the patient do it - with a wound of this size, this usually works well.

If the wound is too big, apply direct pressure on the artery between the heart and the wound, like this: http://www.citizencorps.fema.gov/cert/IS317/medops/images/ic...

Apply just as much pressure as needed to stop the bleeding, use your fist if your fingers are not strong enough. Wait for the ambulance to apply a more permanent solution.

You're correct and provide useful information. Sorry - sometimes I forget to not use medical terms

This is a 𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒍𝒚 negative way of looking at it, in my opinion. It's obvously in a early stage, still only testing on animals. We have no idea how this product will work when it's "in every ambulance".

http://imgur.com/Jg6Zanj

I have no clue what word you used. Font choice isn't always under the user's control and Unicode is inconsistant for those people.

"Ridiculously", with poofy italic fonts.

Since I'm guessing you're on Windows, Notepad is unicode-happy and you can paste into it.

There's an iphone header in the screenshot.

So there is. Wasn't loading when I clicked it. My bad.

If I was on windows I would have control over the font my browser uses.

"Here's a nickel, kid," etcetcetc.

You can italicise by surrounding with asterisks.

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