Life Saving Foam Stops Bleeding

Kausik Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D. (00:05):
So for this particular study, we focused on a rapid hemostatic bandage that is cost effective as well as can do the job when it matters the most. What happens in the field or during an accident is due to heavy bleeding, patients die and these fatalities usually occur in the first 30 minutes or one hour. Our whole idea was to develop a very simple solution that could have the hemostatic efficacy within this first 30 minutes to one hour. The gel itself, for every five ml of gel, what it does it in that 30, 40 second, it expands by six to seven times of its volume. So for every five ml, you can expect an expansion of about 35 ml. Anytime you have a profuse bleeding or bleeding, what we do is we actually press on top. And that by itself, due to body's cascade of clotting, parameters, it stops the bleeding.

(01:25):
So what we did here is actually did the same thing. Instead of putting the hand, we injected it and it creates a volumous expansion. The sponge itself with its negative gravity, it is pushing it down and because of its addition sticks in and around the wound and sticks there, expands, and then forces it down so that the blood cannot come in. There is a company here, SIMETRI, which was born out of UCF. So the CEO is UCF alumni, and she was kind enough to lent us one of the mannequins. So these particular mannequins have wounds and holes or the gaps inside, and then there are tubes where you can flow the synthetic bloods and you can control a little bit of those blood flow rate.

Pritha Sarkar (02:16):
So this is a reometer. What it does is if you have materials that are liquid or viscoelastic, it can measure its mechanical properties. So when you have materials that are very soft or gel-like, you can't use traditional tensile testing to test them because they'll fall apart or break apart. So that's when you use a instrument like this. So that's what this instrument does. It basically sees how flowable the material is, how strong the material is and stuff like that.

Kausik Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D. (02:47):
This is, I think, much more cost-effective, easy to use. Anybody you can train to use because it's a two-part system, all you have to do is just inject, push it. It comes out, nothing's to be done, and then it does the job. And after 30 minutes or one hour, anybody can take the foam out slowly and don't even have to be a doctor, but the training process is extremely easy. Even a student can do it.