Convert ASAP

A friend paid a visit, which made for an eye opening weekend. I won’t tag him here, but he’s lived in Ukraine since 2012. He’s retired from the US Army and he now spends many of his days providing medical training to soldiers in Ukraine.

He and I are of the same opinion that tourniquet training should come with tourniquet conversion training as well. But while I’m a gadfly, with suspicions and theories based on my home brew experiments, my friend is out there living it.

He’s converted hundreds of tourniquets on the front lines. He runs a nonprofit as well, which is aimed in part at teaching tourniquet conversion, not just to combat medics, but to front line soldiers. He showed me numerous photos of absolutely absurd tourniquet applications that have led to amputations. In one there was no bleeding. It was a case of trench foot. He feels money would be far better spent on proper training than prosthetics and I strongly agree.

I wish I could post the photos he showed me here and I wish I could point you to his nonprofit as well. But at this stage, I’ll just attach a clip I posted a few months back.

Tourniquet pressure drops immediately following application. And lost arterial occlusion = harm. So use whatever tourniquet works for you to “get off the X”. Then convert ASAP. In my opinion, the lines: “don’t remove them until you get to a hospital” ... “tourniquets are fine for 2 hours” ... "it's a tourniquet, it's going to hurt" ... at best lead to complacency. At worst, they cause lasting harm … and a lot of cash burnt on prosthetics.

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