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U.S. Military Developing Ultrasonic Tourniquet
Burlap writes to tell us the MIT Technology Review is reporting on a new DARPA venture to create an "ultrasonic tourniquet" to help stem bleeding on injuries sustained in battle. The project plans to commit $51 million over the course of 4 years. From the article: "[I]t aims to create a cuff-like device that wraps around a wounded limb. Rather than applying pressure to the wound to stem the flow of blood, the device would use focused beams of ultrasound (sound waves above the audible frequencies) to non-invasively clot vessels no matter how deep they are."
clots "no matter how deep they are".
I believe this could also be a weapon whose end result would be indistinguishable from death by "natural causes".
I guess its appropriate the military came up with this.
Because the first thing that's going to happen when your clot's not big enough is that it's going to go to your lung. Or heart. Or brain.
You can expect the statistics of soldiers having strokes for no apparent reason to go WAY up.
Maybe they could invest in making a device that un-clots blood using the same technique? If they could say stop a clot before a stroke kicks in somehow.
Task Mangler
Once applied to a wounded limb, the cuff would automatically detect and then seal damaged blood vessels or arteries, by focusing beams of ultrasonic waves at the wound to clot it, in a process known as high-intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU.
in other news, the CIA has a large number of "enemy combatants" that have died unexpectedly from stroke...
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Well the death ray only has evil purposes, he HAY!
You take it, I don't want it...
So you can clot the blood...how easy would it be to unclot the blood, say in an emergency? There wouldnt be a physical device you could remove.
Granted, my only medical experience is treating badly banged up Boy Scouts, but I can see two issues with this thing:
1) How reversible is it? I mean, once the wounded person gets to advanced medical care in a hospital or the battlefield equivalent, how easy is it to remove the clots? I know this (thryombolysis) can be quite tricky for hospitals to pull off as it is in cases like heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms.
2) What about partially formed clots? I can only imagine the damage caused by huge amounts of partially formed clots floating around in the body wreaking havoc.
Granted, if the person would clearly die without the treatment anyway, then those points are void. But surely this has more side effects than tying a piece of cloth around a limb and cinching really tightly.
At any rate, those seem like some pretty clever engineers and scientists at work, and I certainly hope this device works as well as they hope it does.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
"An individual from the local Army research center was hospitalized this afternoon. Doctors are puzzled by a mysterious disease that caused his penis to massively swell, then fall off. Witnesses in the emergency room said they heard muttering and sobbing 'I only had it on quarter power!'. It is currently believed that the condition is not contagious".
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Well, I guess, this device is meant for very special situations, when there is already an emergency -- think "wounds, sustained in battle" -- these aren't only 5.56 bullet wounds, but also severed arms, legs, inner bleeding etc. From what I remember from first aid classes I received during basic training (in an defence organisation, similar to the American Maryland National Guard), if you've got your leg severed, you don't really care if that clot is going anywhere at all... You've got literally seconds to stop the bleeding, because you lose hundreds of grams of blood every second (that is a liter in less than a minute). And if the question is life or death, it doesn't matter, that you have to risk the life of the injured to at least try to save his life.
...to an extremity for however long it takes to get back to a real hospital?
Sounds like a good recipe for gangrene.
Oh, yeah. That's exactly what we in the military need. Another specialized object to have to lug around everywhere. Does it WORK better than a two rags and a stick?
Oh, and BTW, "is it reversible? WTF. No. Tourniquets are not reversible. You hopefully save the life, but at the cost of guaranteed loss of the limb.
Since I didn't know what a tourniquet is, when I first read the headline, I immediately visualised something like Atreides Sonic Tank from the Dune.
Guess I wasn't that far from the truth...
I get it now. They aren't talking about tourniquets at all, at least in the sense most people know. They're talking about a BANDAGE.
A tourniquet is applied upstream of the wound, to make blood stop flowing to the wound (and therefore stop the blood loss). This is non-reversible and causes loss of the limb.
Bandages try to stop the blood from getting out of the wound downstream (well, they slow it down so the clotting action can stop it).
This is a BANDAGE that's applied AT or over the wound. It's NOT a tourniquet that cuts off all blood flow TO the wound. Sounds pretty cool, actually, once you figure that out.
They've been shooting up so deep on that afghani heroin they can no longer find their veins
this explains it all!
BBC News carried a story about this back in June.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5106598.stm
51 million in research.... plus who knows what the cost per tourniquet would be.... it is not just whether the amount of effectiveness versus a 25 cent strip of cloth going to save X number of lives, but whether you could have saved more lives by spending that money on something more practical, be it medical or otherwise.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
WARNING: Never aim toward anyone's head, neck, or torso (unless that person is a suspected terrorist, a suspected insurgent, or an enemy combatant being held at a secret prison).
... "US Military Developing Ultrasonic Trebuchet".
I am now somewhat disapointed with the subject matter.
The device is supposed to recognize automatically if and where the injury is. That's where the $51M price tag for the research comes from.
Others are currently investigating this--try googling "ultrasound thrombolysis." Ultrasound can, under some conditions, help to break up clots, especially in combination with drugs like rt-PA. This is being applied to stroke treatment as well as deep venous thrombosis therapy.
Maybe they could invest in a device that unburns a burn victim using the same technique? It they could say stop a burn before a death kicks in somehow.
Maybe they could invest in a device that unshoots a gun victim using the same technique? If they could say stop a ruptured internal organs before shock kicks in somehow.
Sig
51 million in research.... plus who knows what the cost per tourniquet would be.... it is not just whether the amount of effectiveness versus a 25 cent strip of cloth going to save X number of lives, but whether you could have saved more lives by spending that money on something more practical, be it medical or otherwise.
You're not seeing the big pictre. Just like with NASA's programs, devices and techniques like this, developed for their most aggessive and necessary settings, can still have broad use in a more traditional, civilian setting. $51M is nothing compared to the R&D that's spent on routine medical devices and products for use in everyday hospitals. The science involved in this (including a better understanding of clotting, and in using devices that don't literally squeeze the blood flow out of tissue) has to be useful in lots of other ways, too. Cost is the bottom line, but in this case you have to way the cost against a much, much larger set of returns.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What I haven't seen anyone yet mention is the possibility that these tourniquets could be scanned for. Surely they give off quite a bit of energy, and even if only very short range, a decent scanner with a scalable depth setting could conceivably locate it.
Imagine: Enemy combatants walking through town with a handheld device, till they see a huge cluster behind the wall of a building, just like Hudson's motion tracker in Aliens. This tourniquet could make the wounded into quite noticeable targets.
What are the possibilities of adapting jamming devices already employed to cover up the ultrasonic frequencies? How soon till there're few serviceable airwaves? Especially if this is done short range, it'd only hinder the U.S., as it's creating more frequencies that must be covered up, while the enemy can communicate freely farther away.
Ok, so you save X amount of lives today for that money, when 2X lives could have been saved at this moment if you put that money somewhere else. A year from now you've saved 1.5X, ten years from now you've saved 5X and as time goes on more lives are saved because of that $51 million... then if a conventional war was ever to break out how many thousands, if not millions, of lives would it save?
The thinking regarding tourniquets among the U.S. military in Iraq is that they have such a rapid response in getting a wounded soldier to a hospital that they are handing out tourniquets to the ranks. The belief is that most wounded will get to surgery fast enough that the effect of the tourniquet is not a factor in deciding to save the limb.
This device appears to make a decision regarding the limb -- it may be a last-resort measure for the field for perhaps an instrument for conducting surgery at the hospital.
I didn't say anything about it being military. Heck, I might be advocating speinding that money on weapons that would kill the enemy before they cause the injury that needs a tourniquet.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
$51 million is absolute chump change, especially for a technology that at least at first glance appears to be extremely useful and viable.
Also consider that a human life is generally valued in civil courts at $10 million dollars on average (and probably more so for the young generally highly employable males in the military). As far as I remember, that value is somehow derived from what your future earnings potential, future offspring potential, and things of that nature- my friend showed me the formula once, she was involved in a medical malpractice suit and the figure was highly dependant on age. The point being is that in economic terms, the return on investment on this technology is potentially phenomenal.
Tourniquets are cheap, but artificial limbs are a bit pricy, and damned inconvenient for the people who have to use them. If the device costs $200,000 a piece, and each one only saves one limb it is still a huge savings. And then you have the quality of life issues, Even a badly mangled limb beats the hell out of the best artificial limb in existance.
There is more than one way to skin a cat.....I got up to 4,521 ways, but the batteries died in my electric belt sander
Early leaked information says that this so-called "sonic tourniquet" is able to open locks, repair mechanical devices, and communicate with computer systems. It is also usable as a tourniquet.
"Rather than applying pressure to the wound..."
Because sound waves are magical and not fluctuations in pressure. (Drools onto self...)
So not only do ultrasonic waves clean your teeth and break down fat cells, they can also effect localized internal blood clotting. Wow, is there anything ultrasonics can't do?
No, this sounds like bullshit pseudoscience to me, in the same vein as ions, magnets, and energy auras.
There are these devices called stent filters, thin tubes with a mesh inside, inserted into arteries or major blood vessels. They act as a filter and capture blood clots before they can do real damage. Typically they are inserted into the arteries int he legs before surgery to prevent DVT from throwing clots into the bloodstream. They can later be removed relatively easily by a surgeon. Feel free to help my explanation here. :)
:-(
I wonder what the range is on this thing.
I took a seminar at the Univ of Wash; the biophysics professor was the man working on this project. I saw a video demonstration (on a pig). You all needn't be so skeptical, unless you like flamewars; it works. This device may also be used for a direct, transcutaneous/transdermal (non-invasive) approach to targeting cancer cells/tumors. When applied, the injured area cauterizes, creates scar tissue, which is a heck of a lot better than bleeding to death or suffering side effects from a bombardment of chemicals or radiation. I'm glad they're still working on this project; hopefully they'll find a way to standardize it, recoup R&D, and get it in the field for the rest of us.
I wonder if this thing (or something based on the same principal) could be used to kill someone and make it look like a heart attack?
Whatever happened to the old field method of gunpowder and match cauterization...
can they really get these things to generate enough heat that quickly? wouldn't it be easier to just keep a nice chunk of titanium/copper etc and a way to superheat it? I mean, yeah it's basically civil war technology, but i don't really see how this is going to be cheaper, faster, or more reliable.
please let me know if my logic is screwy.
In the post-Vietnam era any losses are not acceptable; the American public refuses to accept that a war does cost lives. From the military point of view something that'll lead to more soldiers being saved, thus less negative PR, is extremely valuable.
Tourniquet was a poorly chosen word. The device DOES wrap around, but it does NOT automatically clot all blood in the general area. It provides a combination of ultrasonic imaging so that qualified medical personel can locate severe bleeding, and stronger ultrasonic cautery so that said personel can then target specific trouble spots. The cautery itself doesn't simply close off the artery in question, it causes clotting over the injury to the artery while bloodflow hopefully continues through it.
The clotting it does is functionally equivilant to the clotting hoped for when direct pressure is applied to a wound. It can do that more quickly without further contaminating a deep wound that in a combat injury is no doubt contaminated enough as it is.
Given that, it seems to me that if it works out every emergency room could stand to have a few of these available for accident victims.
Tourniquets do kinda suck, though. Rather than hauling some ridiculous ultrasonic contrapton around, keep a couple packets of QuikClot (zeolite powder) in your kit.
Testing this on pigs, they cut the pigs' femoral arteries and let 'em bleed for 3 min. IIRC.
No therapy - 80% mortality.
Best competing products - 60% mortality.
QuikClot - 0% mortality.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
In that case you need to get a clue.
Ultrasound doesn't magically cause clotting. Ultrasound causes heating. With most diagnostic devices, this effect is pretty much negligible and/or needs to be kept below a certain threshold according to (insert local medical device agency, for example FDA) regulations.
However, if you direct several strong ultrasound sources at a certain volume of tissue (hence "focused ultrasound"), the heating effect becomes significant enough to cause clotting (you don't need to heat blood all that much to cause clotting).