Commander Zero reminds us of the appalling number of fake tourniquets out there. Sadly, the same can be said of many emergency medical devices.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but if a price on a CAT-style tourniquet seems too good to be true, it probably is. And, unlike many other counterfeit products, getting caught with one of these and having it fail when you need it is, literally, a matter of life and death.
I got a reminder about this in my email today from NAR. If you think about it, t his thing is simply injection moulded plastic and some nylon webbing. That means the barrier to entry for making a knockoff is pretty darn low. As a result, these things are all over Amazon and eBay. Yes, there are other wendors with nigh-impeccable creds selling the genuine product….but I’m just not willing to take the chance that their purchasing agent made a mistake that month and got some knockoffs from Glorious Peoples Plastic Factory No. 55 in Changzhou.
He goes on to recommend safe suppliers, where you'll pay a little more, but get a guaranteed genuine product. Some of his readers add other sources in the comments to his article. My personal preference is for the SOF-T Gen. 5 tourniquet (and its training version), because it's wider and therefore should be a little less painful for the victim, but the CAT that he recommends is just as good in practice. (I also trust and recommend Dark Angel Medical as a supplier.)
If you take first aid or emergency medical gear seriously (and I hope you do), I highly recommend clicking over to Commander Zero's place and reading the article (and its comments) in full. Also, if you keep an emergency tourniquet or three on hand (and, again, I hope you do), I strongly recommend getting a training version of the same tourniquet, so you can practice applying it without breaking open the sealed packaging of the real thing. If the first time you try to use it is when someone's bleeding to death, you won't be very good at it, and that may have tragic consequences. Remember, when the S hits the F you'll default to the level of your training - so train!
(That reminds me . . . my first-aid qualifications are way out of date. I must look into refresher courses. I wonder if it's feasible to do a basic EMS course on a part-time basis at a local college? That may be a very useful certification to have.)
Peter
As fro emt training,all the local colleges around here require so many shots to take the course would never do it.
ReplyDeletewould be nice if alt trauma type training was available,any body have any ideas in the New England region?
New England region? Have you considered SOLO schools Wilderness First Responder / EMT courses? The EMT course includes taking the NREMT certification exam. They're in New Hampshire primarily but they also do classes all over the country.
DeleteI strongly recommend their Wilderness First Aid and First Responder courses for anyone who's active outdoors, they're great.
When I took my Stop The Bleed class, they said your serious TQs should be pre-staged, not left in the wrappers. It saves seconds, when seconds matter.
ReplyDeleteHere's a video on that.
Community colleges and a couple of "Health Systems" in my area offer both EMT and Paramedic training. In the health systems, the course runs $1400; at a CC, Lab fees run $200, and tuition is about $1100. There's also an EMT refresher course that's about half that.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the Red Cross may also offer First Aid Classes. My kids took them through the Boy Scouts, and there was no charge for students under 19.
Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts do the training too. And concur, pay the money, get the real deal!
ReplyDeleteRegarding blood loss prevention - Are the 'instant blood clotting' packs all they're cracked up to be? And if so, I'm guessing the version you get from China via Walmart is - contraindicated . . .
ReplyDeleteI have never had an issue with CATs out of the wrap. Set them up with the band mostly open, folded over and the bar in the clip, ready to go. No worries about bloody hands fighting a plastic wrapper.
ReplyDeleteRefuge Medical.com offers some of the best IFAKs in US., and training at several levels. They are a Christian ministry as well, serious enough about Scriptures that the crew are about to go on Shabbat. They're good people, and ship fast. And no, I'm not affiliated with them, but know the real deal when I see it...
ReplyDeleteDoesn't matter who the maker of a CAT might be. Whatever one you have you should be practicing using it...on yourself. That way if you need it you can apply it in a timely fashion AND you will find out quickly if it was worth the cost or not. Buying one to stick in a bag and never touch till someone is bleeding out is piss poor planning. A good way to fail.
ReplyDeleteApplying the tourniquet, regardless of brand, is going to suck for the casualty...ALOT. I am speaking from experience on this.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the SOFT-T is a better choice, IMHO, because it has a metal windlass. Unlike the CAT, which is plastic. This can and does make a difference if you ever find yourself working in sub zero temperatures.
Peter, please, PLEASE remove the plastic wrap from your tourniquet. It seems like it only takes a moment to open it, but almost nobody grabs the tourniquet first thing with clean, dry hands. When I went through my SABC Instructor course in the air force the chief leading it had us open one dry handed, and then had a couple volunteers do it with bloody hands (pig, I believe). It was much harder. So was opening the israeli bandage and the quick clot gauze. Bandages and gauze you can open with shears (you've got GOOD shears in your kits, right?) but you don't want the extra delay with a tourniquet.
ReplyDeleteAlso, test out the gloves you keep in your kits. A lot of the kit supplied ones rip pretty much immediately.
Anything in a sterile package needs to stay in that package till needed.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't do anyone any good if you apply a bandage or some other device to
a wound that has been contaminated due to the package not being intact.
Many of the bugs you would introduce doing this are now antibiotic resistant.
So whenever possible keep things in original packages to minimize infection risks. The key to making use of your equipment quickly and correctly is practice. There is no substitute for it.
I don’t recall if my CAT is in a sterile package or not. Doesn’t make any difference, it’s staged and ready to apply.
ReplyDeleteBeing neat and sterile is for after THE BLEEDING IS STOPPED.