Nanoparticle Infused Gauze Quickly Stanches Wounds

jackieduvall writes "Medical gauze has received its first upgrade since World War I. Chemists have infused it with nanoparticles derived from kaolin clay, which somehow give it an amazing ability to stop severe bleeding. It was developed when the Navy approached a team of inorganic chemists at the University of California Santa Barbara to solve a problem with QuikClot, a zeolite-based hemostatic agent that became way too hot and caused burns when it came in contact with water or blood. While performing blood clotting tests, they realized that kaolin clay, which has been used as a control for clotting experiments since the 1950s, could also be used as a first aid product." There is a video demonstration alongside the article. It shows the gauze halting the bleeding from a pig's aorta. The blood isn't excessive, but if you're bothered by that sort of thing, you may want to skip the video.

Comments

Also works for the runs...

[neapolitan]

Medical factoid - kaolin and pectin are the substances that constitute the anti-diarrheal substance "Kaopectate" (hence the name.) Note that it doesn't really do anything but bind with water -- kind of a clay-like substance that will then give one more firm stools.

I think the modern kaopectate has modified its ingredients, but kaolin clay like substances are still available for medical use. Nice to see a new implementation of this technology, with the "nano" prefix thrown in for sexiness.

Re:Humph... This happens a lot

[bargainsale]

I am an eye surgeon [IAAES?], and I find it hard follow why Dmitri Azar in the linked article thinks it would be so useful in our field.

Bleeding isn't normally a big feature of eye surgery such as cataract surgery.

Maybe he has applications in retinal surgery in mind. Blood in the vitreous humour inside the eye clears away very slowly, and sometimes needs to be removed surgically, which is a very major eye operation. It would be good to have some substance you could inject into the eye which would clear the blood faster: in fact various things of this kind have been tried.

It doesn't seem that this stuff would be particularly useful in that way, as it arrests bleeding rather than clears blood.

Neurosurgery I can see, though.
It reminds me of when I did neurosurgery as a trainee, years ago; brain bleeds easily, and the more you touch it, the more it tends to bleed. We used to splosh peroxide on the bleeding spots to arrest bleeding (I don't know if this still goes on).
I remember a cynical anaesthesiologist saying he was convinced that peroxide had no actual effect in itself to stop the bleeding - what happens is that the peroxide fizzes for several minutes and during that time the surgeon has to keep his fingers away from the brain, and it's THAT that arrests the bleeding.

Re:I have a better idea to stop the bleeding!

[rossz]

The U.S. gives more money to countries in need than anyone other country in the world -- by a huge margin, especially if you combine government and private aid. When a disaster hits, the U.S. is often the first there with actual relief supplies. When that tsunami hit, the UN spent the first few months bitching about the quality of the hotel buffet and didn't do a damn thing about the people who needed help. The U.S. immediately sent a naval carrier task force (I think it took about a week to get there) -- which was criticized by idiots. A carrier task force gives you:

Multiple hospitals, fully stocked with everything you need.
Tons of food.
Enough electrical power to supply a city.
The most modern communication equipment in the world.
The ability to create something like 100,000 gallons of pure drinking water a day.
Helicopters for transporting supplies, personal, and the injured.
Construction equipment, bulldozers are handy things when buildings have collapsed.
Security. Natural disasters tend to attract roving bands of thugs who take advantage of the chaos to prey upon the helpless.
etc, etc, etc.

A carrier task force is about the best damn thing to have around when dealing with a disaster of that magnitude. I don't even need to list the huge sums of money and supplies donated by the American people and American businesses. I know of a lot of companies that sponsored donation matching.