A spongelike bandage has been developed to help prevent fatal haemorrhaging and infection following an accident.
University of Central Florida Assistant Professor Kausik Mukhopadhyay said his team had created an antimicrobial liquid gel that when applied expanded in less than a minute to cover the wound.
Assistant Professor Mukhopadhyay said they named the product SilFoam, as it was more of a foam than a traditional bandage wrap.
“SilFoam is a liquid gel comprised of siloxanes (silicon and oxygen) that is delivered via a special two-chamber syringe which rapidly expands into a spongy foam upon exposure to each other within the wound in under one minute,” he said.
Assistant Professor Mukhopadhyay said the sponge applied pressure to restrict the haemorrhage at the delivery site while also serving as an antibacterial agent because of the silver oxide in it.
“Without proper medical invention, injuries sustained from traffic collisions, serious workplace accidents or weapons may result in fatal hemorrhaging.
“These fatalities usually occur in the first 30 minutes to one hour. Our whole idea was to develop a very simple solution that could have the haemostatic efficacy within that time.
“If you can save the patient, then the doctors and the nurses can then save the patient.”
Assistant Professor Mukhopadhyay said for every five milliliters of gel injected, you would expect an expansion of about 35 milliliters.
“Anytime you have a profuse bleeding or bleeding, you want to press on top and stop the bleeding,” he said.
“So, what we did here is actually the same thing. Instead of putting the hand, we injected it, and it creates a voluminous expansion.”
He said the sponge also resulted in a more gentle removal.
“The adhesive property of this bandage is optimized so that when you take it out from the system, the smaller vessels don’t get ruptured, but it has the right amount of addition that can adhere to the muscles, veins and the arteries so that the blood doesn’t leak.
“The sponge’s porosity and adhesion properties help it expand and seal the wound, allowing the body’s natural clotting process to take over.”
Read the full research paper: Antibacterial sponge for rapid noncompressible hemostatic treatment: spatiotemporal studies using a noninvasive model.
