Backcountry Medicine 101 (youtube)



Enjoy!

Awesome! Thanks

Good video. One thing she said wrong was that sweat sodium goes up with heat acclimatization. That should be sweat sodium goes down with heat acclimatization.

Interesting find Wayne -- thanks for sharing.

I don't I buy into her suggestion to spear the sides of the tongue with safety pins and tie it off to a PT's chin to protect the airway. A $2.00 Berman OPA would be a much safer and more effective solution.

The tongue is full of relatively large blood vessels, sensitive nerves, and taste buds, not to mention that the mouth is full of bacteria (especially in a prolonged back country environment with less than optimal oral care).

I'm sure her argument would be that the safety pins and string serve as an improvised OPA without having to carry additional medical devices, but one could make the same argument by saying drop the safety pins and string and simply skewer the tongue with a sharpened stick found along the edge of the trail.

Yeah, that isn't going to happen either...

Jim

Wilderness medicine books have taught the Safety pin method of securing an airway long time, it is an old technique.

Well, a safety pin is a lot thinner than a sharpened stick and a lot less likely to do damage ;-)

(I've actually heard this from a number of sources, and it was mentioned in our WFR training as well; I carry safety pins and blanket pins in my pocket FAK as they have a number of uses, including creating improvised slings.)

As for the video, excellent - thanks for posting it.

Note that it provides the same answer as noted in our Sawyer Extractor discussion as well - don't use it; she says your best snakebite kit is "a set of keys" so that you can get to a hospital asap after you hike out of the wilderness.

Lots of other solid, if not novel, information in the video, and well-presented.

Re the safety pin thingy, imagine a few things. You are an airman last class, hitching a ride across the jungle of Panama in the co-pilots seat of an Army OH-13 which is equipped with litters on each skid (think a MASH re-run here). Now imagine that there is an unconscious soldier strapped to the litter on your side of the aircraft. Imagine that the soldier "swallows his tongue," and is in real trouble. Imagine that the pilot, an officer of course, tells you to open the first aid kit, find a safetypin, and run it thru the soldiers tongue. Now comes the fun part. Imagine removing your seat belt, leaning waaayyyy out of that little bird (there are no doors by the way) about 1000 ft up, fishing in the soldier mouth, finding his tongue, and running the safety pin thru it, from top to bottom (easiest to go in this position). Been there, done that. In addition to all of the other stuff, the tongue is mainly muscle, really hard to run a less than needle sharp pin thru. But he lived, or so I was told...

I'm just some schmuck on the net, here to listen and learn. But it seems to me that neither bleeding nor infection can kill someone who's dead from lack of air. Isn't it all about priorities?

Taking that logic one step farther one could argue that in the absence of having safety pins and string available, we should just gouge the tongue out with a knife to protect the airway. The alternative that was suggested was that a $2.00 disposable Berman airway would hardly add any bulk to a wilderness FAK, and would be significantly more effective and less invasive.

Jim

These Berman Airways, are they something any layperson can get their hands on, or is it some specialised kit that requires some training or at least instruction ?

Sorry I'm not paramedic but I have done some first aid courses, not come across mention of these things, ( first level too basic I suppose) but I think everybody understands safety pins.