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EMS House of DeFrance http://www.emshouse.com Peripheral Med Courtesy the EMS House of DeFrance http://www.defrance.org The U.S. Army is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to equip all of its combat troops with a futuristic bandage designed to stop massive bleeding, despite doubts about its effectiveness and the development of a less expensive product many scientists think works better. Army leaders, who deemed the HemCon bandage one of its "Top 10 Greatest Inventions" this year, call it a revolutionary step in treating severe hemorrhage, the leading cause of preventable death in combat. It is among the few nonsurgical methods to stop bleeding that is too severe to be controlled with a tourniquet or gauze. Yet even as the Army's purchase order approaches 60,000 units a month, doubts are rising from inside and outside the service that the bandage works as well as advertised — or at all. Scientists working for the Navy have questioned claims that HemCon possesses a unique blood-clotting ability, saying their studies show the dressing to be only slightly more effective than gauze. Some soldiers in Iraq say they have been discarding the $89 dressings unused because they don't consider the rigid, Styrofoam-like bandages practical. Outside scientists say another product stops bleeding far more quickly and effectively — a granular substance called QuikClot, which costs the military $9.85 per bag. Army medical officials acknowledge that HemCon isn't perfect but say that it is the closest they have come to finding a safe treatment for massive bleeding. While the bandage might fall off eventually, soldiers in modern combat probably will be treated by a surgeon long before that happens, and the dressing can help keep them alive in the critical minutes after an injury, they say. They agree that QuikClot works but say it can cause severe burns. Officials with the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Air Force have issued QuikClot to all of their combat forces, saying that the potential for burns is an acceptable risk. And many of the Army's combat troops, reaching the same conclusion, are buying QuikClot for themselves. Medical officials in the Army say the perceived shortcomings of HemCon have been largely a problem of training. Their tests, performed on pigs at the Army's medical laboratory in San Antonio, showed HemCon to be extremely effective at stopping severe bleeding when properly applied, according to reports of the tests published in the Journal of Trauma. "It has no known side effects, the performance is amazing in every study we've developed, and the reports from people who actually use the product have been positive," said Col. John Holcomb, commander of the Army's Institute of Surgical Research. But Holcomb's counterpart in the Navy has reached a different conclusion. "I've tried every one of these products many times on many different kinds of wounds," said Navy Capt. Peter Rhee, director of the Navy Trauma Training Center in Los Angeles. "For big-time bleeding — and that's what we're really worrying about here — HemCon doesn't work." The
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