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Blood Vessel Shunt May Save Limbs In War
The FDA has just approved for military use a shunt that allows partially-severed limbs to continue to get circulation. The FDA approved the device in a fast-track process lasting only a week. The article notes: "For most, it won't be a matter of saving a limb outright but rather salvaging the quality of a wounded leg or arm... The shunt may save injured limbs from amputation, since it can be implanted on the battlefield to maintain blood flow until a wounded soldier undergoes surgery, FDA officials said. Since the start of the Iraq war, more than 500 soldiers have lost limbs, many to injuries suffered in roadside bombings."
Peace may save limbs lost in war.
In short: stop warmongering, and soldiers will stay in one piece.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Only 500 soldiers have lost limbs since the start of the war? Why does that sound so unlikely? We've been hearing all along that the death toll is so much lower than previous US wars because of advances in trauma care that allow soldiers to survive injuries that were once not survivable, but we're seeing a huge increase in limb loss in the trade off.
Does anyone know if this statistic is accurate?
But all that was specificed in the article was "over 500 soldiers" had lost limbs. Now, five hundred & thirty four would be over five hundred. But so would seven thousand.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
seeing as there over 32,000 injured soldiers
from
http://icasualties.org/oif/
TOTAL - MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTED 32,544
which will have to be supported for years to come
remember the methodology of land mines ? in war wounded are a much worse burden than dead as they require a lot of personnel to support them, GO USA WE CAN WIN !!!
your trillion tax dollars at work
Special treatment shouldn't be given to government agencies, advocacy groups, or granted based on wide popularity. The FDA should be fast tracking based on objective standards or not at all.
on TesticularCancerBusters on the Discoavery Channel?
Is it just another hi-tech gadget to shield yourself from the reality of war? Please, just stop and take you soldiers home, our president Putin is right that the US has overstepped it's national boundaries. Starting wars on tampered evidence, fueling the new nuclear arms race and destroying the MAD balance with missile defense programs. I'm serious, please make your government stop this descent into madness.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
is that they do tend to hunt down inventions like this - bandages that can clot wounds instantly, a shunt that can save a horribly mangled limb from amputation. The army (or navy, etc.) may be focused on making better weapons, but it also does do quite a bit to help its own - including purchasing inventions like this.
Okay, so we're only talking "wounded" here.
Huh? 95% of the troops who cannot return to duty are not amputees? If they all their body parts and are not dead, then why can't they return to duty?
Dont go to war in the first place.
:)
Seriously, why must every outcome of any disagreement basically boil down to something you see in the school playground?
Do you realy want to live in a society where every solution is "Lets get even"?
This is not just about America this is about the World, hello, wake up.
If America was invaded by creatures from Mars the most probable reaction from average American to the question "We are being attacked from somewhere else?" would be "You mean Europe?" (yes that was a reference to the 2005 movie War of the Worlds
Sure, it would be nice to not be in Iraq, but the fact remains that we're there and we're not pulling out anytime soon. Even if we were pulling out of Iraq immediately, there will be other wars in the world. This technology has nothing to do with politics, so knock it off.
I'm not that familiar with battlefield medicine, but this seems like a big step forward for it. Anything that helps soldiers (American or otherwise) do their jobs better, protects them, or helps them live better lives after conflict is a good thing.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Yeah, but your own link include some 18,704 who were medevaced due to illnes. I mean, the flu is pretty bad an all, but not too many people of soldiering age lose a limb from it.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
When they approve stuff for military use only, it doesn't have the most glorious history of being perfect. Sure, maybe the anthrax vaccine is perfect protection against that disease, but the side effects...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Again, 5% & 95%. 5% is 500, so 95% is 9,500.
9,500 injuries that mean that they cannot return to duty. Blind in one eye may or may not be a factor. It depends upon the job. The same with deaf in one ear. The same with limping.
It seems that they're using an extremely narrow set of criteria. I would count being blinded in one eye the same as losing a hand/arm. And being deafened in one ear. And being partially paralyzed.
Reiser dumps Core, Pleads GUILTY !! Oh, the evil in the empire
You might count them as being the same, but they're clearly not the same actual injury.
Actually, many times they are. As was pointed out in the original article.
Many times, what differentiates between losing a limb and keeping the limb attached is what medical attention is available and how soon it is available.
Which is what the article was all about. Injuries that would have resulted in the loss of the limb can be mitigated with the new blood shunt so that the limb is not lost.
Try reading the article, okay?
You're missing part of the equation here. The 'fast-track' approval for the military (obviously) doesn't involve as rigorous testing as the standard civilian approval process.
The military is willing to accept medical devices that have been fast tracked. The civilian market is not - even if the FDA 'fast-tracked' something for the civilian market, nobody would likely use it because they wouldn't want to face the liability for using a device that hadn't gone through the 'real' testing.
You're also missing that the military environment is different. In Iraq, potential amputation injuries are frequent, and distance to proper care can be far. In the US, the usefulness of this device would be limited, as by the time someone who happened to have one of these devices got to you and it put in, you'd already be at the major trauma center anyway.
paintball
If a serviceman/woman happens to read this and other Slashdot threads, you have my thanks and admiration.
Perhaps the title could be changed to:
Blood vessel shunt may save American limbs in war.
Not that the limbs of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties are worthy of saving, right?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Many more amputations come from motor vehicle accidents, gunshots, tumors, diabetes. I alone did about 10 last year.
One of my colleagues just got back from Iraq - he amputated over 600 limbs in 40 years or so, and he's just one surgeon. I'm sure the army has around a 50 or so orthopaedic surgeons at the minimum.
..........FULL STOP.
A partner of mine,who was an orthopaedic surgeon in Iraq for 4 years, did over 600 amputations, and he's just one surgeon.
That number is waaay lowballing the actual number.
..........FULL STOP.
Although the description of the procedures sounds like something beyond what most medical directors would allow their paramedics to do (military combat medicine routinely involves procedures that civilian EMS cannot perform) and more like something that a doctor would do at a combat field hospital to stabilize for transfer to tertiary care (if I got the military parlance right)... or in civilianese, it is something that a doctor would do at a Level V, IV, or III trauma center to stabilize the patient for transport to a Level II or Level I trauma center
The article, and the discussion here, only considers Americans. In reality, there is probably over 10 injured Iraqis for every injured American.
The inability of the average American to even consider this can be seen as the whole problem of this war in a nut shell, if you're in a grumpy mood.
An other mathematical factor is that you can amputate 600 limbs on only 150 people.
Yeah, the US should just get out of Iraq. Once the Americans are gone the Iraq civilians will be safe! Iraq will become a fairytale land of peace an harmony. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds will hold hands and sing in the streets... well, until some ass hole driving a truck with a few tons of TNT detonates in the middle of the crowd.
Dumbing down into a war Vs peace situation is stupid. Iraq is going to be a killing field for at least the next few years. The only question is who is going to do the killing, who is going to do the dying, and how many people are going to be dead. It is going to be a blood bath regardless of what decision is going to be made. That isn't to say that the US should or should not go, just that it isn't a simple choice between peace and harmony and war and death.
Nobody thinks the world would be at peace. But we wouldn't have fucked up Iraq. Saddam was no hero, but his was a secular regime hated by those who hate us. All we've done is give them another country to turn into a theocracy. At this point, there is no hope for the next three decades at minimum. Either we stay there till it is even more obviously impossible, at which point the anti-US theocracy takes over and 30-40 years later, tensions ease (think Viet Nam). Or we leave now, the theocracy takes over, and 30-40 years later tensions ease. This is all Bush's fault. Oh, and Nader's.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Misery outranks death when speaking of warfare.
A disabled/wounded soldier costs a lot more time, resources, efficiency and ultimately morale, than a dead one.
That's why IEDs are so attractive to the opposition in Iraq and why such tactics will probably only see more use by every war waged.
While it is probably better to have at least something of your arm or leg attached to you, this device will do nothing to advance any military cause.
It might also distract people temporarily from the fact that while the ability to protect personnel from such devices is there, the willingness to pay for it and implement it, is not.
Although i don't agree with how we went about gong to war, I do like the fact that Saddam is dead. The soldiers that made that possible have little or no say over how, when, or for what reason they go to war over and should not be held responsible if the American public deems that a war is unethical (Vietnam, for example, and yes there are ethical wars) In any case, those soldiers should have the very best technology and medicine that we can give them, Period.
-1 It makes me squeamish (Hey we are geeks right?)
Why the fuck are we wasting money for things that provide tactical measures.
Solve the root of the problem! - WAR... and get US troops out of there.
The world would still have been like it is today, if US did not invade IRAQ!!!
"Since the start of the Iraq war, more than 500 soldiers have lost limbs, many to injuries suffered in roadside bombings."
Guess we didn't learn from the landmines of WWII almost 60 fucking years ago, did we? Did D-day slip our minds? War isn't fucking pleasant. Failure to learn from past mistakes only leads to drastic future mistakes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
While i find this product fascinating...
The article was absolutely horrible. By reaching the end, I felt like i had read it twice. The author kept repeating their facts without any citation. I'm not questioning that "over 500 soldiers have lost limbs in the war" or that the FDA "took less than a week to review and clear" the device, but did they really have so little to go on that they couldn't say anything more about this product?
"Democrats voted for the war as well"
Uhh... No...
Close your eyes and go back to me, if you will, to January, 2003. The talk then was that we need to muscle Saddam into letting us inspect his nuclear sites, etc. Bush and his talking heads went on all the Sunday shows and said over and over that they had no credibility. That unless Saddam knew that Bush could, at his will, make war with Iraq, he would never capitulate. We were told that we need to give the President the "big stick" he needed to conduct international diplomacy.
So the Democrats cooperated in giving him the big stick.
But when you give the Sheriff a gun, you're not giving him the authority to barge right into a crime scene and start shooting-up the place, guns blazing like the wild west. In fact, you expect the sheriff to treat his gun and the deadly force it represents with utmost respect. And if any Sheriff had taken as little care with his 'big stick' as Bush did, we'd have him indicted, arrested, and on trial in a federal court.
So please, lets stop with this revisionist history.
This is a lot of excitement about very little.
For a start, the technique of using a temporary shunt for vascular injuries has been around for years, so it's not new at all. There's really nothing for the FDA to "fast-track" so that's just puffery.
I've been treating catastrophically injured limbs (including many gunshots and blast injuries) in Africa for 21 years; literally thousands of limbs and I've done my share of amputations.
Traumatically amputated limbs are almost never suitable for revascularisation so we can forget that. Most limbs are amputated not for just for vascular problems, but because of various combinations of extensive skin loss, extensive muscle loss, extensive bone loss, vascular compromise and/or nerve loss.
I can't recall more than a couple of limbs where rapid interim revascularisation would have led to a salvageable limb and eventual salvage of a more functional limb. "Critical need" my ass.
So this is just more bullshit to try and make the troops and the public feel better about a bullshit war.
The Cutterman
Wow... it's a tube. I'm blown away.
Does this mean Vint Cerf can get royalties from it, for his prior art?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
You nuts that start railing on the war in Iraq miss the point and do a disservice to the troops who serve in our military. It's not about war being good or bad. It's not about the Iraq, Afganistan, Vietnam, or WWII. It will always be in our interest to keep our soldiers alive and healthy, so relax and be grateful. On a side note, there's nothing to stop this from being used to treat civilians on the battlefield.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Civilian and military trauma surgeons have been using this technique for some years now, as part of damage control surgery. Bleeding is stopped and perfusion is restored as a priority before any complex surgical debridement or reconstruction. The technique undoubtedly saves both limbs, and disability in those limbs that are salvaged. Any old bit of sterile tubing will do, and I doubt this commercial device adds much in the short term. If you're not fazed by trauma/surgical images, then a picture of a shunt in action is available here.