By Clay Dillow Posted 01.10.2012 at 3:26 pm 8 Comments

Thrombin A clotting agent already found in the blood, thrombin is being layered onto sponges that can stop bleeding almost immediately. via Wikimedia

Bleeding out on the battlefield--far from the trauma wards and triage units that might save their lives--is a scenario that soldiers simply have to live with (and try like hell to avoid). But thanks to a nanoscale breakthrough at MIT, the chances of it happening could be significantly reduced. Researchers there have created a nanoscale coating that can stop bleeding nearly instantaneously using a clotting agent already found naturally in blood.

That agent, called thrombin, is coated onto sponges that can be easily packed by soldiers and field medics (or civilian medical personnel for that matter) and shaped to fit just about any kind of wound. Those pre-coated sponges are a pretty big improvement over tourniquets and gauze, which are limited in their ability to stop every kind of bleeding. Tourniquets obviously can’t be used on many parts of the body (the neck is a good example), and other glues and chemically treated bandages designed for dressing battlefield wounds come with their own complications and shortcomings.

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Science, Clay Dillow, bandages, battlefield medicine, bleeding, health, military, nanotechnology, thrombin
Thrombin, on the other hand, is already used by the body to stop bleeding. Civilian hospitals also use it already, but it’s in liquid form so sponges must be soaked immediately before they are applied to the wound, making them impractical for the battlefield. MIT’s sponge instead uses a spray-on biological nanoscale coating using alternating layers of thrombin and tannic acid, which results in a film that contains a large amount of functional thrombin with a shelf life that makes it feasible to pack them into the field. Both substances are already FDA approved, the researchers say, which means the sponges could quickly find their way into wider use.

That’s good news for soldiers, and potentially good news for anyone who sustains a trauma far from the emergency room. The MIT lab is now working on a sponge that combines a blood-clotting coating with an antibiotic layer in a single sponge to help fight off infection even as a dressing stops the initial bleeding.

8 Comments

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D13
01/10/12 at 3:56 pm

Well the Military and MIT will be the only people to use it. Big pharma wont sell this to Hospitals. MIT should release it to the public directly somehow. Might as well have been created on another planet because we wont get to use it on this one. Way to go MIT, another amazing museum piece that know one gets to touch. Depressing. We should be able to choose what we use on our bodies. We vote on presidents dont we? We cant vote on the latest available technologies that we would like to see in hospitals?

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."

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JediMindset
01/10/12 at 4:03 pm

cool. this is great news. hopefully this is out on the market soon. big improvement from the old band-aid.

"religion is like a prison for the seekers of wisdom"

-Killah Priest

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JediMindset
01/10/12 at 4:11 pm

@D13,

i believe that we dont elect the presidents,(except JFK but thats another story) they are already chosen. they are all determined beforehand. how do you think an idiot like GWB was able to stay for 2 whole terms? let alone being elected in the first place? they give us the right to vote so that we have hope. "ignorance is bliss". and you are right, they might not ever let civilians see this. just like the cure for aids, cure for cancer, the truth about 9/11, truth about aliens, truth about JFK's deliberate murder, area 51 the list goes on. the government likes keeping its people in the dark. this is just another prime example of big brother stealing MITS hard works and using it only for themselves.

"religion is like a prison for the seekers of wisdom"

-Killah Priest

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DAP31
01/10/12 at 7:19 pm

I suppose this is where the solutions start thought. Take flu vaccines for example - expensive preliminary testing leading to affordable public usage later on. It looks like it's target is specifically for battlefield so while it'd be cool to see in hospitals, I understand why it's just being kept in the military.

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Lord Elliot the...
01/10/12 at 8:31 pm

@D13, JediMindset & DAP31

"Civilian hospitals also use it already, but it’s in liquid form so sponges must be soaked immediately before they are applied to the wound, making them impractical for the battlefield."

Read the article.
-Spouting a fountain of nonsense since 1995-

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materialsdave
01/11/12 at 3:35 am

If you're interested in finding out more about the science behind the story, you can download the original Advanced Materials article for free from doi.wiley.com/10.1002/adma.201103794 .

Dave Flanagan
Editor, Advanced Materials

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XOcof
01/16/12 at 8:01 am

Dear Mr. Flanagan,

Do you happen to know id there is a Pubmed article on this? It seems there could be a very good market for the geriatric population, especially those on blood thinners such as warfarin. Too bad it's probably not the answer for DTI's

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Quinn223
01/22/12 at 11:50 am

I agree with D13


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