Wound Stasis Foam Saves Countless Human Lives on the Battlefield

If you’ve ever served or have family that’s served in the military you will really appreciate the latest innovation out of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Arsenal Medical, with funding from DARPA, has created a wound stasis or wound sealing foam that can patch up life-threatening internal damage for up to three hours, increasing soldier survival rates nine-fold!

One the battlefield, the Department of Defense sets a one hour standard for admittance of a wounded soldier to an advanced treatment facility; this is commonly referred to as the ‘Golden Hour’.

With many types of injuries, this is an acceptable timetable for soldiers to survive. In the cases of internal abdominal injuries that result in internal hemorrhaging, soldiers will often bleed to death before seeing an advanced medical professional. The problem has been that internal wounds can’t be compressed like external wounds, and tourniquets aren’t suitable because the exact location of the injury is unknown.

Wound Stasis Foam

The new wound stasis foam, developed by Arsenal Medical, has proven to be the solution to this life or death issue. The foam is immediately injected into your body following injury in two quick stages. When the two injections interact inside your body, the foam is actually able to distinguish between healthy and injured tissue, and it then binds itself to the wounded tissue for up to three hours!

Testing

You’re correct in thinking that you wouldn’t want to be the control for this experiment, however it was shown to be wildly effective when utilized in a swine injury model.

During testing in the model of a lethal liver injury, the foam was shown to be minimally invasive and easily injected. Once the two injections interacted inside the body, they increased their size 30-fold, encompassing the entire abdominal cavity and latching onto injuries. This process was able to reduce blood loss six-fold until surgeons could adequately treat the hemorrhage. The wound stasis foam increased a patient’s rate of survival from a paltry 8% to an astonishing 72%! The foam was then easily removed from the body by surgeons with minimal internal residue.

Summary

“Wound Stasis provides an important addition to our ability to save life and limb. Getting after these heretofore difficult-to-stabilize, if not untreatable wounds, expands our options and effectively extends the ‘Golden Hour,” said Maj. Gen. Bill Hix, Director of Concept Development for the Army Capability Integration Center at Training and Doctrine Command. “A capability like this is important in any operation, but would prove vital during operations in austere areas where military resources and infrastructure are at a premium.”

DARPA

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