I seen them drag him out and plug it right there. While many assume he was specifically talking about menstrual absorption, there is no evidence that it is specifically meant to stop bleeding. Your "Tactical Tampon" is Useless for Life-Threatening Hemorrhage Photo: author, When using a wound packing simulator from QuikClot; it is obvious that a tampon doesnt come close to filling a ballistic wound cavity. Put the fear of total civilizational cowabunga into your friends and family today! Tampons are made to soak up blood, after all. He wasn't picky about what it should be made of, though. Various devices made of dung, acacia juice, goosefat, and opium (used in different mixes) were wrapped in lint or linen and used for gynecological problems and even contraception. I ONCE did my time as a triage medic in a field hospital unit during the Vietnam Era! The only reason I would stuff a tampon in someone is if I shot them and was trying to extract intel out of them. Youre dang right, Im gonna use whatever absorbent reasonably clean items I have on hand to help stop OR slow down the rate of blood loss!! You could even get sued if you treat a patient beyond your level of training. Regardless of how many times it is refuted, one of the many myths surrounding bleeding control that continues to linger, is using a tampon to treat a gun-shot wound. One thing we learned as new medics in the Army was that if we cant get more than three uses out of one object/item/device/piece of equipment, we didnt carry it. People have experienced reduced menstrual cramping and tend to feel less discomfort. If the packing is holding (no pooling or seeping), then replace the regular gauze and wrap it TIGHTLY with some variety of elastic bandage. If an active shooter breaks out the windows of a hotel and starts shooting into the crowd and you are laying on the ground bleeding, would you want me to yell out Does anyone have a tampon, or, would you prefer I yell out Does anyone have any QuikClot, Kurlex, or Olaes Bandages. One was a close quarters ak47 to the side from maybe 10 away. Direct pressure doesnt always work, but its usually the first thing you try. Tampons are no substitute for PPT: packing, pressure and tourniquets. Either they are lying or you are lying Dexter. 4th they come in various sizes and are often to small for the wound. Bullet wounds tend to be non linear and larger than a tampon. When they went to check on him later the surgeon told them, "You guys saved his life". tampons": o.b. He told me not to worry about Marine X because every time I send something to him, Marine X thinks it's for him too. Tampons have been around for centuries and were originally used for healing. NOTHING BUT nothing is as good as the ER Department to save a life from a potential Sepsis infection from a knife or bullet wound! Youll hear us say it all the time pressure wins the war against bleeding. This was proper medical advice: the treatise was published in The Lancet, still the most respectable medical journal in England. Yet for some reason, people still feel the need to treat patients like they are living in some bad Mad Max remake. Tampons soak up a lot of blood, they are also made of cotton which sticks to material and tissue. Weve got over 12 years of well, that didnt work lets try something else to learn from. These people are often the same ones who say tourniquets are unsafe (read our article on TQs here!). Men seem to think that if they can stick a dick in it, it doesnt need anything to be sterile during the time when women are most vulnerable to infection. The Tampon The name loosely translates as plug. French physicians began using battlefield dressing based on the design of the article of female hygiene. Anyway, again, thanks for the article, and the great discussion fodder! Some of the earliest tampons recognizable as we know them todayintra-vaginal devices made from a string and a wad of something absorbentwere documented in Europe in the 18th and 19th century.. They also had a huge range of pessaries on offer for various gynecological problems, soaked in everything from goose fat to opium, but it's now commonly believed that they were a second line of defense, because they probably caused infections. Bullets do funny things when they enter the body. Tightly! According to Carla Rice in her book Becoming Women , people objected to them for all sorts of reasons: religious leaders thought they'd make girls prone to erotic feelings, and parents didn't want their daughters' hymens ruptured. A descendant of pioneers, Cache was raised in the tradition of self-reliance and grew up working archaeological digs in the desert Southwest, hiking the Swiss Alps and Scottish highlands and building the Boy Scout Program in Portugal. The Papyrus Ebers, the world's oldest printed medical document, describes the use of papyrus tampons by Egyptian women as early as the 15th century BCE Sometimes, both parents and teens may wonder whether tampons will have an impact on virginity. This might change the amount of fluid your vagina produces during the rest of the cycle, but more research is needed (2). People who are relying on the anecdote of a military guy carrying a tampon in his helmet are forgetting to consider why he made that choice. In regard to choosing a product that controls major bleeding, plenty of bandages have evolved from the old few rolls of Kurlex gauze and a six-inch ACE wrap, to what is now considered an actual pressure bandage/dressing. Companies like Tactical Medical Solutions, QuikClot, Celox, H&H, SAM Medical and others have produced some of the most advanced, effective, and efficient bandages and dressings for the treatment of penetrating traumatic injuries in the field and tactical medical industry. Additional students will be charged on the day. And even though using a tampon can occasionally cause a girls hymen to stretch or tear, it does not cause a girl to lose her virginity. Just as sterile if not more so than those gauze pads and other medical stuff. Because you wont have a fully staffed OR. This is the theme of this article. Medics with years of combat experience say they consider tampons excellent for penetration trauma because not only do they absorb a lot of blood, they are sterile, packaged with easy-to-use applicators, and leave a "tail" protruding from the wound that aids doctors in easily removing them. As we have in the field started packing wounds in recent years (this is a carry over from combat medics, yes I know its been standard for years in the military, but not so for most US based field medicine). I also wouldnt use one to filter debris out of water. They may continue on a straight path in and out. But for the record blood-letting was a good idea back in the day too. My point is that sometimes we may have to use a little ingenuity to save a life or two. This article will explore the history of tampons and how they were used to treat bullet wounds. With your membership you will also receive discounts on products and hours of Premium video content. Until you can get to a medical facility at least. Enter in your email and password to create a FREE account. They're also often processed using some fairly body-damaging chemicals (like chlorine), so new frontiers need to be pushed to make them eco-friendly and safe. Survival Trauma Kits: IFAK, GSW Kit, Blowout Kit What Should Be in How to Treat the Most Common Burn Injuries, Back to History: Top 9 Civil War Survival Recipes, Potassium Permanganate: Why I Still Carry this Old School Chemical, 8+ Places To Avoid Like The Plague When SHTF, Top 6 Survival Rifles And Why You Need One. Exploring the Benefits of Probiotics in Greek Yogurt, Who Invented the Pythagoras Theorem? Sterile technique is not what youre able to provide in a trauma situation at best youre providing aseptic technique which is good enough. Heavy flow is not massive hemorrhage: Tampons dont belong in IFAKs. Compression, elevation, pressure points, and even tourniquets if necessary. Thanks for the input. Modern-day tampons were developed in the 1930s. Invented by German gynecologist Dr. Judith Esser-Mittag in the 1940s, the o.b. But the modern tampon faced a bit of an uphill battle. In no world would the 9g of absorption be beneficial tostop an arterial bleed, capable of pumping out 1000 mLs in just over 3 minutes. Makes no sense to me. It seems we've been putting folds of various stuff up our genitals for thousands of years, though you'll likely be surprised at the reasons why. The theory is that tampons soak up blood so they should be good for hemorrhage control. Symptoms and signs of TSS may include a sudden fever (usually 102F or more), vomiting, diarrhea, fainting or feeling like you are going to faint when standing up, dizziness, or a rash that looks like a sunburn. Is better than nothing at all.