The Windlass Tourniquet: Is It Taking the Wind Out of the "Stop the Bleed" Sails?

Background: Civilians are often first-line responders in hemorrhage control; however, windlass tourniquets are not intuitive. Untrained users reading enclosed instructions failed in 38.2% of tourniquet applications.

Missing expectations: Windlass tourniquet use without formal training yields poor results.

Background: Despite significant attempts to educate civilians in hemorrhage control, the majority remain untrained. We sought to determine if laypersons can successfully apply one of three commercially available tourniquets; including those endorsed by the United States Military and the American College of Surgeons.

Methods: Preclinical graduate health science students were randomly assigned a commercially available windless tourniquet: SAM XT, Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT), or Special Operation Forces Tactical Tourniquet (SOFT-T).

Trauma Patients' Attitudes toward Organ Donation at an Urban Level I Trauma Center.

Many health-care workers (HCWs) surveyed at a trauma center believed their patients distrusted the organ allocation system. This study compares urban trauma patients' (TPs) attitudes toward organ donation with attitudes from the 2012 National Survey of Organ Donation Attitudes (NSODA). TPs presenting to the trauma clinic between September 2014 and August 2015 were surveyed.

Does Pain Have a Role When It Comes to Tourniquet Training?

Background: One of the greatest conundrums with tourniquet (TQ) education is the use of an appropriate surrogate of hemorrhage in the training setting to determine whether a TQ has been successfully used. At our facility, we currently use loss of audible Doppler signal or loss of palpable pulse to represent adequate occlusion of vasculature and thus successful TQ application. We set out to determine whether pain can be used to indicate successful TQ application in the training setting.

Placenta to the Rescue: Limb Salvage Using Dehydrated Human Amnion/Chorion Membrane.

Reconstruction of skin and soft tissue wounds can pose a unique surgical challenge. This is especially true for cases of exposed bone and tendon where soft tissue loss is extensive and opportunities for tissue advancement or rotation are limited. A clinical case is presented describing an experience with dehydrated human amnion/chorion membrane (dHACM, EpiFix®/AmnioFix®, MiMedx Group, Marietta, GA) graft to obtain granulation over an open fracture with desiccated bone.