Shrimp-Based Bandages Save Lives

Roland Piquepaille writes "Unstoppable bleeding is one of the leading causes of death on battlefields. But now, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have a way to reduce bleeding when they're wounded. In "War Bandages," ScienCentral News writes that these new bandages contain chitosan molecules, extracted from shrimp shells. These positively charged chitosan molecules attract negatively charged red blood cells, stopping hemorrhage in one to five minutes. As said one of the co-founders of the Oregon-based company behind these bandages, "You can have a hole in your heart and 60 seconds later it's sealed." The Food and Drug Administration approved these bandages for human usage, but today they are exclusively sold to the Army. With a $90 price tag for a 4-inch-by-4-inch single bandage, would you buy them anyway? This overview contains more details and references. It also shows you how the red blood cells are attracted by the chitosan molecules."

Re:Let's get a dumb question out of the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Shrimp are farmable, very easily (think sea monkeys...). Might as well ask "will cows be hunted to extinction".

Welcome to 10,000 BC

[Julian Morrison]

Nowadays, we have this thing called "farming". It's rather good at solving the problem of over-hunting (over-fishing, over-picking, etc).

Re:What about allergies?

[bluGill]

Every emergency room I know of would prefer to treat an allergic reaction to treating complete loss of blood. Allergies are serious, but the odds of surviving even the worst cases when you are in the hospital are much higher than the odds of surviving loss of most of your blood.

Re:Handy and effective way to stop bleeding

[Nutria]

Correction: the said co-owner does not have a heart (otherwise he would not be making such a killing with those exclusive overpriced bandages) and thus his little chest-stabbing PR stunt resulted in only a minor self-inflicted cutaneous injury.

You self-righteous, brainless shit.

John Holcomb has been working on this for 12 years, with no big company that has other income streams to fund the research.

Also, do you know how diffucult it is to create these bandages? Neither do I. Maybe it costs $70/bandage to specially refine the chemical and create the bandage. After all, if it were easy, it wouldn't have taken 12 years.

Besides, the Pentagon probably thinks that a $90 silver bullet to reduce the mortality rate by 10% is an incredible bargain. And these bandages will reduce the amount of work that doctors will have to do to repair wounds, meaning that they can treat more personnel, and less blood loss means that there will be less systemic damage, and less need for blood transfusions, people will heal quicker, etc, etc, etc...

Re:What about allergies?

[Nutria]

In folks who're allergic to shellfish, which part is it that triggers the reaction? Peanut and shellfish allergies never seem to be mild, and while this is a wonderful lifesaving development, I wonder whether other methods should be kept handy in case this particular one would kill a particular person.

Allergic reactions get triggered by eating shellfish, not touching them...

One reason why they're not on sale to the public

[kgp]

The rection is very exothermic (generates a lot of heat). In fact enough heat to cause serious burns (an extra complication). The trick for using the version issued to the army in powedered form is to be trained to use just enough powder.

Would anyone have them at home. Sure. Imagine a deep glass wound to the neck, arm or leg without immediate treatment (pressure to the wound or this material) you could be dead in minutes. I think this will find it's way into better First Aid boxes. EMT and other first responders (including the police) could use it now.