If you nick your skin, it's easy to stop the bleeding by applying a coagulant powder directly to the cut. Yet, bleeding wounds inside the body are beyond the reach of such blood-stopping powders.
Now, Christian Kastrup, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, and a team of researchers, biochemical engineers and emergency physicians, have developed a way to clot internal wounds by creating a self-propelled powder that moves against the flow of blood.
"Bleeding is the number one killer of young people, and maternal death from postpartum hemorrhage can be as high as one in 50 births in low resource settings so these are extreme problems,” Kastrup explained in a UBC press release. “People have developed hundreds of agents that can clot blood but the issue is that it’s hard to push these therapies against severe blood flow, especially far enough upstream to reach the leaking vessels. Here, for the first time, we’ve come up with an agent that can do that.”
To give blood-clotting powder a push, Kastrup and his colleagues added calcium carbonate to the coagulant powder. The carbonate forms porous micro-particles that latch onto the clotting agent (tranexamic acid). As the particles release carbon dioxide gas, fizzing and moving like mini-antacid tablets, they launch the clotting agent toward the source of bleeding.
More rigorous testing and development needs to be done before this agent is ready for use in humans, as the press release and study explain. But it's possible that in the near future this powder could be used to treat otherwise unreachable cuts such as those in postpartum hemorrhages, sinus operations and internal combat wounds.
Previously: New obstetric hemorrhage tool kit released today, In poorest countries, increase in midwives could save lives of mothers and their babies, Teen benefited by Stanford surgeon's passion for trauma care
Video courtesy of UBC
