{"id":2009,"date":"2024-04-08T07:07:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T07:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=2009"},"modified":"2024-04-08T07:07:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T07:07:25","slug":"living-room-trauma-management-the-armory-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=2009","title":{"rendered":"Living Room Trauma Management – The Armory Life"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By Will Dabbs, MD<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0The statements reflected in this piece are the author\u2019s opinion and do not constitute medical advice. Please contact emergency services immediately if you have a health emergency.<\/em><\/p>\n

L<\/span>et\u2019s start with my personal philosophy. People are bad. I\u2019m not the only guy in the world who has drawn that conclusion. Adorable little three-year-old kids are pretty awesome, and you and I are cool. However, most everyone else is at least suspect. One need go no further than their daily newsfeeds to see incontrovertible evidence of the innately fallen nature of man.<\/p>\n

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A simple trauma kit can be easily assembled at a low cost and kept handy in your home should anyone in your family ever experience an attack or accidental injury.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That lamentable attribute of the human condition manifests in some curious ways. Greed is a timeless scourge. It is a corollary of pride, the alpha sin. Pride got Satan. It\u2019s what drove Cain to kill Abel. Pride is what might make some envious and want to take other people\u2019s stuff.<\/p>\n

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The contents of a emergency trauma kit are relatively simple and easy to assemble. We recommend acquiring them from reputable medical supply sources.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that\u2019s why you have to be ready should you hear glass breaking at 3 o\u2019clock in the morning. Like many of us, I have been the victim of crime \u2014 but not while I was physically present. However, I have any number of buddies who have been much closer than that. If a home invasion degenerates into a conflict, a little preparation can literally make the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n

Big Picture<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As regards firearms or knives, the actual mechanism of incapacitation can be polyfactorial. Interdicting the central nervous system will put the hiatus on most anything anyone might have been planning on doing.<\/p>\n

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Modern defensive bullets can be remarkably efficient against tissue, which would require immediate medical attention.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you or somebody you care about is ever shot, have reasonable expectations. You do the best you can, but your options at the scene will be limited. The goal is not to fix the problem. The objective is to keep someone alive long enough to reach a hospital. To that end, your mission is to facilitate breathing and to keep the blood where God put it in the first place.<\/p>\n

The ABC\u2019s<\/strong><\/h2>\n

ABCs stands for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. You are likely not going to be intubating anybody on the floor of your dining room, so the focus for the typical guy or girl on the street is most often supporting gas exchange and controlling hemorrhage. Let\u2019s start with the basics.<\/p>\n

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Bullets do weird things in tissue. Dealing with the aftermath takes a little forethought.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is about to get messy. You need to embrace that. If you pass out at the sight of blood you might want to try desensitizing yourself. Everybody in med school was a little bit green on the first day of Gross Anatomy, whether we admitted it or not. A week later you could enjoy a pizza in that place. The human animal can acclimate to anything.<\/p>\n

Plugging the Holes<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Most of your chest is empty space. A glance at a chest X-ray bears that out. Your chest acts like a bellows. When you inhale, you create a negative pressure state that draws fresh air into your lungs.<\/p>\n

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On an x-ray, dense stuff like bone shows up white. Less dense stuff like air is black. This is my chest x-ray. Most of your chest is actually just empty space.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Your lungs are like two airtight bags that fill your chest cavity completely. The demarcation between your lungs and your chest cavity is a potential space. There\u2019s no air there, and it is sealed off. As a result, your lungs stick to the inside of your chest as you draw fresh air in and push the old stuff out. However, punch a hole in that and nothing works quite as it should.<\/p>\n

The nuances of pneumothoraces are beyond the scope of this discussion. Balance of probability you won\u2019t be doing a needle decompression or improvising a chest tube at home. However, the onsite goal for treatment of a sucking chest wound is to stop the flow of air from the outside into that pleural space. Every scrap of air that seeps into that critical space decreases your lung volume and makes it tougher to breathe. The immediate answer in the field is a chest seal.<\/p>\n

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Chest seals are pieces of adhesive plastic that will exclude air from entering a penetrating chest wound. They\u2019re relatively inexpensive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A chest seal is an impermeable piece of plastic that forms an airtight bond over a wound and keeps air from getting in. You can even improvise this. I saw the coolest news story a few years back concerning a cop who bodged up a chest seal in the field out of a Doritos bag and some duct tape and saved some guy\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

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Commercial versions of chest seals are designed to stick reliably in spite of blood, hair, or ick. Always store your chest seals in pairs. Wounds often come in both the entrance and exit variety. Expect to pay about fifteen bucks for two.<\/p>\n

Stop the Bleeding<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A typical adult human has about five liters of blood. That\u2019s two and one-half two-liter Coke bottles. A good rule of thumb is that if you spill one liter of that you\u2019ll lose consciousness. Make that two liters and it will kill you. The rub is that your heart moves five to six liters of blood per minute at rest. Punch a big hole in the plumbing and then get agitated about it, and you can bleed out in a shockingly brief period of time.<\/p>\n

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Israeli battle dressings are the finest combat bandages the author has encountered. Buy a spare so you can crack it open and learn how it works.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If somebody is bleeding vigorously, then direct pressure is typically the first step. Roll up a t-shirt or a clean dish rag and push on the wound. If you\u2019re lucky that will keep things under control long enough for the cavalry to arrive.<\/p>\n

Israeli battle dressings are purpose-designed for this mission. They\u2019re relatively inexpensive from reputable medical supply houses like North American Rescue. I always keep at least two. Get three if you want to crack one open and practice with it. They have a use-by date, but I wouldn\u2019t throw them away if they were past that.<\/p>\n

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Hemostatic bandages like Celox or QuikClot will help expeditiously plug holes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

QuikClot is made from a mineral called kaolin that activates Factor XII in the clotting cascade, promoting clot formation in traumatic wounds. Other products use chitosan derived from shrimp shells to accomplish a similar end. This stuff comes in sponges, bandages and granules. The good folks at the hospital will deal with cleaning it out later.<\/p>\n

Tie It Off<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Airmen learn how to apply a tourniquet during a Tactical Combat Casualty Care course. Image:\u00a0Staff Sgt. Joseph R. Morgan\/U.S. Air National Guard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If that doesn\u2019t do it and the wound is on an extremity, it is time to consider a tourniquet. You can fabricate a tourniquet out of a shoelace, a belt, or some trotline, but there are lots of great commercial options that tend to do a better job and with a much lower risk of permanent injury.<\/p>\n