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Army designates year's best inventions

Jul 15, 2008

The last of the 10 inventions being honored has the unwieldy name of Damage Control Resuscitation of Severely Injured Soldiers, but the goal can be stated very simply: saving more lives. The Damage Control Resuscitation method, the Army says, has become the "standard of care for the most severely injured soldiers requiring massive transfusions". The injuries in question are internal ones, so compression techniques can't be used to stanch blood.

Typically, patients who have lost blood would be administered IV salt solutions in a volume three times greater than their blood volume, and may also receive a blood transfusion. But for some severely injured patients, that massive amount of fluid and blood can be harmful as it inhibits the body's ability to clot.

With Damage Control Resuscitation, doctors limit the use of salt solution, and they restore blood volume using more plasma than in ordinary situations (an even mix of plasma and red blood cells, rather than the more common ratio of four parts red blood cells to one part plasma).

The Army says that the technique has reduced the mortality rate for severely injured soldiers in the field from 65 percent to 17 percent.

Credit: US Army