{"id":76822,"date":"2024-07-26T09:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T15:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=76822"},"modified":"2024-07-26T09:22:35","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T15:22:35","slug":"practical-not-tactical-heavy-flow-is-not-massive-hemorrhage-tampons-dont-belong-in-ifaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/26\/practical-not-tactical-heavy-flow-is-not-massive-hemorrhage-tampons-dont-belong-in-ifaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical not Tactical: Heavy flow is not massive hemorrhage – Tampons don\u2019t belong in IFAKs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Heavy flow is not massive hemorrhage: Tampons don\u2019t belong in IFAKs<\/a><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recently we posted a video outlining the\u00a0challenges of using hemostatic granules<\/a>\u00a0as compared to gauze. In response, we were surprised by how many people advocated for tactical tampons to control massive hemorrhage in a gunshot wound. \u201cDepending on the bullet hole size, tampon and pads are your best bets\u2026\u201d Or, \u201cA tampon would have done the same thing.\u201d Not true.<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s not their job and it\u2019s beyond their capability. While many have written on the fallacy of using tampons for hemorrhage control and wound packing in massively bleeding wounds,1, 2<\/sup>\u00a0there are still those on the internet who continue to endorse this misguided technique.<\/h2>\n

I can find no peer-reviewed medical literature describing or testing the use of a tampon on traumatic bleeding wounds.<\/em><\/h2>\n

Although anecdotal stories of tampons being used in military settings for hemorrhage control may exist, using a tampon as a bandage or \u201cblood sponge\u201d is very different than trying to stop massive hemorrhage with one.\u00a0 Even if the often-referenced Snopes.com cite about a Marine being saved by a tampon placed in his wound by his buddy is true, it doesn\u2019t prove the veracity of the technique.3<\/sup><\/h2>\n

The military has a long history of one generation handing down unofficial lessons learned to the next generation.\u00a0 It seems possible some military medic somewhere was told, \u201cit was the way to go,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t mean it works. When I was in the Special Forces Medical Sergeant\u2019s course in 1987, we trained extensively on live tissue.\u00a0 I remember specifically being told the instructors had tried tampons for hemorrhage control, but they were never effective.<\/h2>\n
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Named arteries (generally the larger ones such as the axilla, brachial, radial, etc) can bleed several hundred milliliters of blood per minute when perforated.\u00a0 (200 milliliters is about 40 teaspoons for those metric-adverse, or 4 shot glasses if that\u2019s your preferred unit of measure). Prehospital hemorrhage control options for this kind of bleeding are tourniquets, if the bleeding source is amenable to circumferential pressure, for instance, a limb, or wound-packing if the bleeding is in \u201cjunctional areas<\/a>\u201d like the neck, axilla, and groin.<\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

RTWT<\/a><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heavy flow is not massive hemorrhage: Tampons don\u2019t belong in IFAKs   Recently we posted a video outlining the\u00a0challenges of using hemostatic granules\u00a0as compared to gauze. In response, we were surprised by how many people advocated for tactical tampons to control massive hemorrhage in a gunshot wound. \u201cDepending on the bullet hole size, tampon and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3254,398,399,483,484,1489,1841,4653,5623],"tags":[5619,16209,8989,17741,667,293],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76822"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76825,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76822\/revisions\/76825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}