'Unique' Israeli bandage: The more you bleed, the quicker it works
WoundClot can stop severe bleedings within minutes, while also enhancing the blood's natural process of clotting.
By REUTERSUpdated: FEBRUARY 11, 2016 15:05WoundClot's new bandage stemming a severe bleed in a liver
A new Israeli-developed bandage aims to save lives in cases of severe bleedings, where conventional treatment procedures could fail to stop a deadly hemorrhage.According to Yuval Yaskil, owner and CEO of developers Core Scientific Creations (CSC), the bandage, called WoundClot, not only stops severe bleedings within minutes - without the need to apply pressure on the wound - but also enhances the blood's natural process of clotting.Cases of severe, uncontrolled bleedings are the number one cause of death in the battlefield, Yaskil said at his office in the Israeli city of Kfar Saba.While the traditional protocol for treating such bleedings include applying pressure on a wound to stop it from bleeding and rushing the patient to hospital, Yaskil said that in some cases like stab wounds to the neck or head trauma injuries, pressure does not work."These products allow us to treat very severe bleeding in the field, with minimum amount of, I would say, training, with minimum amount of interfering with the regular medical treatment or protocols that are used today," said Yaskil.Just stopping the blood from leaving the patient's body is not enough, Yaskil explained, as it can sometimes take hours before a patient reaches a hospital.He says that this is why WoundClot was chemically crafted to stop bleeding, enhancing the natural clotting process while maintaining its own stability for 24 hours."Our product is unique because it is the only product in the market that is non compressional application for severe bleeding while at the same time being bio absorbable. Because this is a contradiction: Bio-absorbable means you want the product to break down, but with holding severe bleeding means you have to have a very stable membrane. And that is basically the trick, or the patent that we develop," he said.The mind behind the science of WoundClot is Dr. Shani Eliyahu Gross, Vice President and CTO of CSC. Holding up a dry WoundClot, which looks like any other bandage, and soaking it in water, Dr. Eliyahu Gross explained that its unique chemical structure allows the absorption of large amounts of liquids without disintegration."When it is exposed to liquids, this product starts to absorb enormous amount of blood and then it transforms into a gel state," she said, adding that the more blood absorbed in the bandage, the quicker the clotting process will proceed.
"The special molecular structure actually holds the whole physical structures together with the blood that (is) absorbed within the product and allowing the blood to remain active, to help the wound to clot and stop bleeding," she said.Video footage of a trial surgery documented and edited by CSC, shows how a 10 by 10 centimeter strip of WoundClot stops a liver wound from bleeding in less than three minutes.Yaskil said that CSC is providing WoundClot to Israeli police forces and the army, as well as selling it to hospitals, where treating bleeding consumes precious time and expensive products in the emergency or operation room.WoundClot costs from less than 10 US dollars per bandage and up to around USD 100 for larger surgical products. While this price range is within the high end of the market, Yaskil said the bandage can replace other products or procedures that cost up to thousands of dollars.