Stopp the Bleeding in the Prehospital Setting: Hemostyptic Dressings

摘要

The understanding of the critical bleeding in the prehospital trauma care is increasing and the use of tourniquets is no longer reserved for extreme cases, and the military. Nevertheless, the rescue team is faced with critical and complicated bleeding, which are not stoppable with a tourniquet or conventional dressings. In such cases the application of hemostatic dressings can encourage the control of up to now not stoppable bleeding. The industry offers many such dressings with different mechanisms of action that need to be known. In this article, the different mechanisms of action and products are introduced in order to get an idea of the available dressings and the correct and situation-adapted use. As in civilian EMS it must be reckoned that patients take long-term-therapy with oral anticoagulants in addition to their acute trauma, chitosan-based hemostatic agents are preferred for this application because chitosan is independent of an existing anticoagulation. However, the application of those special, highly effective hemostatic agents must be trained and trained.