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howdy wrote:The size of the hole depends on the caliber or blade size of the weapon, the angle of the entry and how close the gun was to the person injured. Now look at this new devise...http://www.popsci.com/article/technolog ... kXytLGd.01" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. You are going to increase the size of the hole and the person shot will probably have you by the throat as you insert it!

The Article wrote:When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery. It’s an agonizing process that doesn't always work--if bleeding hasn't stopped after three minutes of applying direct pressure, the medic must pull out all the gauze and start over again. It’s so painful, “you take the guy’s gun away first,” says former U.S. Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh.

{——SNIP——}

Three single-use XStat applicators would replace five bulky rolls of gauze in a medic’s kit. RevMedx also designed a smaller version of the applicator, with a diameter of 12 millimeters, for narrower injuries. Each XStat will likely cost about $100, Steinbaugh says, but the price may go down as RevMedx boosts manufacturing.

Looks like they've already considered wound diameter. A 12 millimeter applicator is only a little bit bigger than an 11 millimeter (.45 caliber) hole. It's not the stretching of the wound that's going to cause pain (it was already stretched considerably larger by the temporary stretch cavity), it's the depth of the device's penetration. In my dad's case, I remember asking him when I was a kid what getting shot felt like. He said that at first it burned really badly like he had been stabbed with a red hot poker, all the way through, but that within minutes the wound track itself went basically numb (tissue shock), and from then on he felt more musculoskeletal pain from the sheer impact of the 6.5mm rifle bullet. He said it felt like he had been kicked by a mule, and his whole side, from solar plexus all the way around to his back felt beaten up and bruised, but the actual wound track itself was essentially numb, and he could not feel his thumbs inside the holes when he stuck them in there.

I'm not discounting any of your field experience, but I am old enough that I can remember the days when people in your job were "merely" ambulance drivers. They didn't start IVs. They didn't administer meds. There was no such thing as ACLS in the field. It was all "scoop and scoot". I myself was transported this way once after a vehicular accident. Now look at all the tools you have at your disposal today. . . . .and yet, your goal is still to get the patient to the ER as soon as safely possible. All I'm suggesting is that the XStat could become an additional tool in the armatorium that people like you in the field will have available to them during that golden hour, while getting the patient with penetrating trauma to the hands of a surgeon who will complete the treatment you started. It goes without saying that paramedic personnel would have to be trained and certified in the use of this device before they could use it in the field, just like they would have to be for intubations and other penetrating, "invasive" treatments, and such training would include knowing when the procedure is appropriate, and more importantly, when it is not.

howdy wrote:The ONLY CURE for a GSW is a Surgeon. You can stuff things into a gun wound all day long and it will probably not stop an arterial bleed. Bullets fragment and go all different directions. You really don't know where the bleed(s) is or even IF there is a bleed. The bleeding that you can see (in a GSW) is not nearly as concerning as the bleeding you can't see.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this device replaces a surgeon; but it may well give someone that golden hour that they might not otherwise have, and it might well extend that golden hour into more time in the right circumstances. My dad had to stick his thumbs into the entrance and exit wounds of a GSW to his chest to help stop himself from bleeding out at Iwo. He survived for almost 48 hours beyond the attention given him by a corpsman (who was killed while treating him), before he received treatment at an aid station in the field. Treatment consisted of morphine, sulfa powder sprinkled directly into the wound, and a gauze dressing. So it is possible to survive a GSW for extended periods of time under the right conditions. This device might have helped someone in my dad's position to have lost less blood than otherwise, and that would be a good thing.