Development and Technical Evaluation of Military Tourniquets and Emergency Tourniquets for Pre-Hospital Settings

Abstract

This paper reports the development and initial technical evaluation of novel pneumatic tourniquets for pre-hospital civilian applications and for groundbased tactical military settings. In such applications and settings, tourniquets may serve as life-saving and limb-sparing devices for rapid and effective hemorrhage control. Development to date has focused on the key requirements that such devices must be fast and simple to apply by non-medical, non-expert users with a minimum of training, and that they must be capable of completely stopping arterial blood flow at applied pressures that will minimize the probability of injuries to nerves, muscle and other soft tissues.

Aspects of the development and initial evaluation that are relevant to hospital-based tourniquet systems will be presented and discussed.