Potato Powder Stops Bleeding, May Help Surgery

Big E writes "'A powder made from the common potato appears to help blood to clot, closing minor cuts and aiding surgical procedures, new research suggests'. Reuters story is here. According to the company that produces it, Medafor Inc. , it is "Effective even in areas of profuse bleeding". That's a bit more than closing minor cuts and they are seeking approval for use during chest and intestinal surgeries. Maybe this will prove to be the biggest thing since the Band-Aid maybe even revolutionize emergency & combat medicine." Here are some Scanning Electron Micrographs of this sweet potato in action, too.

Comments

Re:Well...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

what's the chance for infection after applying potato to an open cut?

Pretty damn good. That's why nobody's talking about applying potato to an open cut. They're talking about using a powder composed of little particles-- they call 'em beads-- that soak up water. What these particles actually do is reduce the volume of a mass of blood, allowing the platelets to form a clot more quickly than they otherwise could.

This is based, incidentally, on exactly the same mechanism that causes cornstarch to thicken a soup. Cornstarch is a powder made up of what are basically tiny starch particles. These tiny particles absorb water, thickening any liquid to which they're added. This stuff works the same way, only on a much smaller scale.

won't help arterial bleeding

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You know, it occurs to me that this product is going to be used in basically the same situations as QuikClot and other similar clotting agents. (QuikClot is a mineral-based agent that's in use by the military; a Google search will reveal all, if you're so inclined.)

The thing about agents like QuikClot and MPH is that they're not really that useful in catastrophic traumas. Blood loss due to superficial injuries is almost always controllable in the field; in the worse case, in which a patient has suffered lots and lots of minor injuries, the blood loss is sufficiently slow that the risk of hypovolemic shock is almost nil.

The real danger in trauma situations comes when an artery is damaged or severed. Clotting agents like these won't help in those cases. You don't stop an artery from pumping by clotting. You stop it by clamping the shit out of the little fucker until you can get it tied off or anastomosed.

So in those cases where blood loss is really life-threatening, these sorts of substances won't help. I'm sure they've got valid medical uses, but they seem more like band-aids or bactine than a real life-saving medical tool.

Just my two cents. I'm not a doctor, but I play one on tee vee.