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There are a mountain ofways to diefrom a traumatic injury , but many of them occur down to this : So much blood slop out that your bodyjust stop consonant work . But now , an observational " injectable bandage " material aims to slow that process in ways existing engineering ca n’t .
What ’s the item of an injectable bandage ? Existing approaches — such as steady bandages , compression bandage and apply pressure — can already slow a baneful bleed . But they all come with job , including that the personnel used in these techniques may aggravate internal injury larn during the same trauma . And there ’s a boundary to how much bleeding you could block up using just gauze and squeezing . But an injectable patch , in theory , could move into the wound itself and adapt to its shape , plugging up blood stream .
In a paperpublished Sunday(April 1 ) in the journal Acta Biomaterialia , a squad of Texas A&M University investigator reported that they had successfully developed a so - call hydrogel that could do just that . It can also leave some fillip benefit , such as inducing blood - curdling , the researchers reported . The hydrogel , however , has been tested only in lab experiment so far , and more enquiry is ask to see if it ferment in living , bleeding humans . [ The 7 crowing Mysteries of the Human Body ]
Their stuff , which they pitched specifically as a solution to " battlefieldwounds , " is a mix of seaweed - derived kappa - carrageenan ( a thick , constitutive mush used by , yes , pastry chefs ) and ceramic corpuscle . The ceramic is the self-aggrandising innovation here , strengthening the bandage without making it less useful . The mixture , even loaded with ceramic , is porous enough to deliver medicines directly into an injury along with the bandage .
The cloth is design to harden after being inject into a combat injury , and the authors report that it could keep much of its strength even after 72 hours in water . They also feel that it stuck advantageously to cells than pure kappa - carrageenan did , and caused " bovid ancestry , " or moo-cow blood , to clot in less than 6 minutes , rather than the common 8 .
It ’s worth noting that these investigator have n’t field - tested their injectable bandage , and they are n’t the first team todevelopan injectable - patch prototype . But their results offer ride hints as to how the technology might evolve .
Originally published onLive Science .
